


At The Hour When We Are Trembling

by Frostfire



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-26
Updated: 2007-08-26
Packaged: 2018-10-03 10:04:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10242179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frostfire/pseuds/Frostfire
Summary: The Wraith make it to Earth, and John and Daniel are left to pick up the pieces.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post S2/S9 apocafic. The Wraith make it to Earth, and John and Daniel are left to pick up the pieces. Title is from Eliot's "The Hollow Men".

When the news comes through to Atlantis, there are about ten blank, unreal seconds where no one believes it’s happening. And then, “ _What?_ ” says Elizabeth, and John’s gut clenches at the horror in her voice. He hears _Wraith attacking Earth_ , and _assembled a power source so we could dial out_ , and _DC gone_ and _President dead_ , and _need whatever tech you have and anyone who can advise on Wraith tactics_.

They hold an instant emergency meeting. Elizabeth’s forehead is furrowed and her eyes are dark with shock, and Rodney’s mouth is a sharply miserable line, and John would give a lot to not have to look at either of them like that. Over the course of twenty minutes, they figure out that: a) Atlantis’ manpower wouldn’t help Earth all that much, b) what Earth really needs is expertise, c) whoever goes will probably not be coming back, d) in the event of planetary apocalypse, having a secondary site of Earth-born humans would not be a bad thing, and therefore (although this last conclusion is a solo effort on his part) e) John should go.

“ _Excuse_ me?” says Elizabeth, fired up with the idea of action, and, “You really think you’re a comedian sometimes, don’t you?” says Rodney, even though he still looks a little sick.

So Rodney and Elizabeth are going too, and there’s really nothing John can do about it. He only protests for a couple of minutes, because they need to establish a temporary command structure for while they’re all gone. While they’re talking, he can see them trying not to think about the news, about Wraith in New York, Paris, Kansas, Colorado Springs. Mobs and screaming and mushroom clouds and burned, blackened bodies. This is it. This is the alien invasion. Earth is falling.

He does convince Ronon and Teyla that they need to—carry on the fight in the Pegasus galaxy, or something; he has no idea what the hell he says. He knows that Teyla’s eyes are sad and understanding while he tells her that she and Major Lorne are in charge while they try to save their planet, and Ronon grips his shoulder and says, “Kick their asses. And let us know if you need help.”

His eyes are knowing, too. Because, of course, this has happened to them, and to everyone they know. The Earth crew are the only virgins here.

But Teyla and Ronon won’t have to see it again. And everyone else John can _order_ to stay behind, at least.

 

When they go, Elizabeth makes one of her citywide announcements. John barely hears it, definitely couldn’t repeat any of it afterwards. He made a farewell speech to his men a little earlier, but that went something like, “We’ll kill the bastards. Don’t let the city get blown up while I’m gone.”

All in all, it’s about two hours from getting the news to stepping through the wormhole to Earth.

 

It’s only about fifteen minutes after that when John realizes that point e) wasn’t the best idea, after all, and really, John’s unique talents might have been best exercised by leaving him in command of Atlantis.

“What do you _mean_ , you don’t have anything for me to fly? Sir,” John adds belatedly. He knows the general’s name, he’s pretty sure, but he’s been busy thinking about other things. Landry and O’Neill are both somewhere else, or possibly dead. Elizabeth was whisked away to join the remaining political leaders at some undisclosed location. Rodney was whisked away to join the remaining scientists at another undisclosed location—Area 51, if you were paying any attention at _all_ ; security isn’t what it could be. But apparently, the remaining pilots are all in the sky already.

“We have a limited number of F-302s, Colonel, and they’re all in the air. And more importantly, we need you _here_ to brief us.” The general is frowning at him: _time to put the good of the planet ahead of your personal preferences, Lieutenant Colonel, is that clear?_

He’s shown into a briefing room full of generals and admirals. Right after he got his promotion, he had nightmares like this. Although usually the nightmares involved something really subtle like his feet being glued to the floor.

 

It happens like this:

“Sir,” says someone, “Wraith ships appear to be turning toward Cheyenne Mountain.”

“ETA?” someone else snaps.

“They aren’t in a hurry, sir, they’re stopping to engage as they come. I couldn’t say exactly. Maybe fifteen minutes—oh. Sir.”

“What else is it?”

“They’re moving ground units in, too.”

“We knew it was only a matter of time before they figured out that this was a major base of operations,” says an admiral.

“It’s too soon,” says someone else. “They’ve dialed in again, but this wormhole will fail in twenty minutes. If we can hold out for twenty minutes, we can get more people through—”

“What about the leaders? The government people?” People are starting to talk over each other, panicking.

“They’re not here yet, the ships will pick them off if they try to fly—”

“The Wraith on the ground will be here before the ships, sirs—”

“Send people out on defense and prepare to arm the self-destruct,” the general snaps. Everyone quiets down. “Get yourself together, Sheppard.”

John blinks. “Me?”

“If anyone on this _planet_ is essential personnel right now, you are. Get out there, keep yourself alive, kill some of the bastards, and be out of range when the mountain blows. And take our goddamn planet back.”

John comes to attention. “Yes, sir.” There isn’t any way to ask, but now he sort of wishes he could remember the general’s name.

 

When John meets the armed, well-built civilian, in the middle of a pile of dead Wraith on the outer perimeter of the final Cheyenne Mountain defense, he doesn’t recognize Dr. Daniel Jackson, SG-1. They exchange a nod and an, “Over there, on your three o’clock, a group of them. Cover me,” and that’s pretty much all the introduction they need.

They met once, before Atlantis, but John met a lot of new people then, and he can never really call Daniel to mind in that context—the memories are all a blur of new faces and yelling and crazy light-up objects. But fighting in the Colorado scrub, this _civilian_ is precise and deadly and absolutely fearless, which John should recognize as dangerous insanity and stay the fuck away from, but he’s never been great at that kind of thing, himself. They cover each other through two separate suicide charges, bomb the fuck out of a low-flying dart, and kill Wraith until dreadlocked bodies cover the ground.

When the mountain blows, they’re out of the danger zone, but they hit the dirt and cover their heads, and when it’s over they stare out over the landscape, fire and rubble and dead people and dead Wraith, and then John’s new friend takes a breath and says, “We need to get out of here. Get people together and go…somewhere else.”

“Right,” says John, trying to remember that he’s a leader, that he might even be the one in _charge_ at this point, and then he blinks and turns and says, “Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard,” and puts out his hand.

Daniel blinks at the hand for ten or fifteen seconds before he figures out what it’s for, and then he says, “Dr. Daniel Jackson,” and shakes. His hands are filthy and scraped, but his grip is tight, and he holds on for a few extra seconds, as if John might disappear if he let go.

 

The first thing they try to do is round up as many trucks and Jeeps as they can—there are a lot of them, someone in the mountain was thinking about the need to get _away_ after the place blew—and look for people to drive them. There are about fifty people left, mostly airmen and a few officers.

The second thing they try to do is talk strategy.

“Well,” says Daniel. “Most of Earth’s major governmental seats, as well as our defense platform in Antarctica _and_ our Stargate, have been destroyed.” He says it really fast, like maybe if no one understands the words, it won’t really be true. “So…”

“So…” says John.

“Uh,” says Daniel, “maybe Area 51? It’s…possible the Wraith haven’t found it.”

“Area 51,” says John. “Good plan.” Rodney, he thinks, is at Area 51, and if there’s anyone who could get them out of this, somehow, miraculously—

John takes a minute, while they’re checking the trucks and Jeeps to see if their helpful transportation-provider thought to throw in supplies also—which he, she, or they _did_ , thank God; there are MREs, first aid kits, extra gasoline, some tents—and says as casually as he can, “So, you’re one of the Stargate program’s flag team. Why’d they toss you out here all by yourself?”

Daniel rubs his forehead with a dirty hand, leaving a black streak behind. After a second he says, “Everyone else had something to do.” He laughs, short and bitter.

“Know the feeling,” says John.

They work for a little longer, while John thinks about Ronon, who lost everything, and what he can be like when he’s remembering his world. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally, “about everyone—in the mountain.”

“Why?” says Daniel. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Right.

After a second, Daniel says, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

John can understand that. “Okay,” he says. “Sure.”

 

The first time Daniel saw people get life-sucked, fighting outside the mountain, he didn’t flinch. They were too busy shooting for a heart-to-heart at the time, but John kind of almost brings it up later.

“It’s really freaking creepy,” he says, in the darkness of their camp in the godforsaken middle of Utah. “What the Wraith do.”

They’re close enough that John can feel the body heat coming from the dark tent area in front of him, distinct from the night chill of the dark tent areas on all other sides. Daniel’s quiet for a minute, and then, “It doesn’t work on me anymore.”

John, only starting to get used to Daniel’s special method of non-communication, tries and fails to parse that. Daniel says, “Ten years of traveling to other planets, fighting aliens. I’m sure there’s something out there that’s bad enough to—to shock me, to,” he grins, just for a second, “creep me out. But that wasn’t it.”

“They were the first thing I saw,” says John, remembering Athos and darkness, and Sumner and the queen. “The first thing that wasn’t just cool.”

“Yeah, _that_ would have creeped me out,” says Daniel.

John remembers _this can’t be happening, this can’t happen, nothing can make this happen, this isn’t real_. He can see the black-on-black outline of Daniel’s form, lying still and breathing easily in their very own alien-infested night. “Sort of,” he says.

 

A couple of days into their road trip, when John notices Daniel shirtless, leaning over their Jeep to get something in the passenger’s seat, the first thing he thinks is that he wouldn’t mind hitting that.

The second thing he thinks is that the apocalypse hasn’t killed his sex drive after all, which leads to the third thing, which is _No sleeping with anyone you work with_. He’s been through this a few times already on Atlantis—it’s automatic with the Marines, but beyond that he had to firmly turn it _down_ , first with Teyla, then with Ronon. It’s doable.

The fourth thing he thinks is that instinct has spoken, and it’s said _yeah, this guy’s with me_. He’s surprisingly okay with that.

 

They have to take back roads, out-of-the-way routes, sometimes just driving over the terrain when it’s flat, because the highways are clogged with refugees. People are fleeing the cities, running into the mountains and the desert, already starting to starve. John thinks about it—better slow death by starvation, or quick death by life-sucking?

John, personally, would rather starve.

When they pass people, Daniel watches them with guilty eyes, but he never says anything, so John doesn’t have to say, _We can’t help them, there are too many, we need to save supplies for ourselves so we can survive and fight_.

It’s all true, but John is glad he doesn’t have to say that while people are starving to death before their eyes.

 

John’s worried, at first, that they’ll have to deal with people trying to join them, and he’s not sure what they’ll be able to do with a bunch of frightened civilians; they aren’t set up to provide long-term care, but he doesn’t think he could just turn people away—and what would he do if they wouldn’t go, shoot them?

But the frightened civilians run away from the Jeeps. John wonders what their fellow humans have been doing to them, just in the past few days, but he remembers the bodies they’ve passed, and doesn’t go after them to find out.

 

The people who do end up coming after them, a few days into the drive—into the _occupation_ —are the people that, if necessary, John would have no problem shooting. There are some militia guys who want their Jeeps, and they do actually have to shoot a couple of those before they go away—John never does find out what their militia was _for_ , though _—_ and then there are the garden-variety assholes, bullies, and muggers who just want more stuff and are stupid enough to think a military group is going to let down its guard. Most of them are scared away by a display of weapons.

One of the airmen, Bosman, is killed when a guy comes after them with a gun. John sees the guy’s face for just a second before a few dozen P-90 shots take him down. His eyes are crazy.

 

They reach Area 51.

It’s a bigger crater than Cheyenne Mountain was. The ground is solid glass in places.

None of them are really surprised. John thinks, _Rodney_ , but it’s distant and blank in the face of the yawning crater, black and still smoking. They all stare at it for a while, and eventually they turn around and start out again.

 

John is pretty sure that their cross-country roadtrip starts out as a basic, brain-stem-level desire to _get the hell away_. They have to establish a base of operations somewhere, but no one wants to be anywhere near the two big holes where people used to defend the planet.

But they’ve barely started out when Daniel has come up with absolutely solid reasons for heading to Connecticut or Vermont or fucking _Maine_ , which is pretty much as far from Colorado as it’s possible to be in the U.S. of A.

“We need to think in the long-term,” says Daniel to their few dozen people, over their campfire in the middle of the desert. “New England is sparsely populated, doesn’t have as big a military presence as other areas, or as many possible threats from humans in violent fringe groups as places like the Southeast or the Northwest, and we’re more likely to be able to find low-tech means of subsistence, like single-family farms, and houses with fireplaces.”

John is pretty sure that Daniel wasn’t thinking about any of those things back at Area 51, when, after ten minutes of standing around and breathing in dust and smoke, he pointed east and said, “That way.” But it’s as good a place as any.

“Vermont,” says John. “There’s an old fallout shelter near Burlington. It’s Air Force-built, left over from the fifties atomic bomb era. It’s big. Complex. Underground. Still has tons of fifty-year-old emergency supplies, generators, whatever.”

Daniel’s eyes say _thanks for backing me up_ , while out loud, he says, “Good. Somewhere to go.”

John thinks about the Stargate, gone up in a radioactive puff of smoke. He’s trying to remember before the program, when Earth was the _only_ place to go, when the sum total of his travel options were contained on this one planet. It’s harder than he thought it would be.

And even then, he could fly.

 

They make their way across the country, slowly. They pass crashed cars, stopped cars, cars on fire, mangled cars with dead bodies twisted around inside them, cars with people living in them. When the terrain is easy enough, they usually drive next to the road instead of on it. A lot of the vegetation has burned, too, and often they’re driving on charred black dirt.

They see more people, people in the cars and people in towns, in fields, dirty and bloody and hungry, hiding and fighting and trying to stay alive. There are bodies everywhere—men, women, and kids, shot, smashed, burned, knifed, beaten, raped. And life-sucked, broken husks littering the ground, crunching under feet and wheels in some places—but there aren’t any more of those than there are of the plain old dead. John sees it all and doesn’t know what to feel. Daniel watches from the passenger side of their Jeep; it’s all he does for days, and his face is blank the entire time.

 

John thinks that he should be more upset about all this than he is.

It’s Earth. The Wraith have made it to _Earth_ , and they’re killing innocent people, burning cities, toppling governments, turning six billion lives into everyone’s own personal horror movie. D.C. is gone, Cheyenne Mountain is gone, London and Paris and Tokyo are gone.

And John is angry. He sees the thousands and thousands of old, drained bodies, and he wants to punch something, shoot something, blow something the hell up. Better than that, he wants to reverse the process, life-suck the Wraith and see how they like it.

He bets they could find a way to use Wraith-energy as a power source, too.

He’s angry, but he isn’t—

The men are living in their very own Resident Evil. He sees their eyes. This is the end, this is it, they’ve seen whatever, the seven seals or the sea of fire, and they’re just hoping to take some of the bastards with them when they go.

John sees cities gone, homes destroyed, and yeah, he wants to blow the Wraith out of the sky. But hanging over all of that—somehow, he swears to _God_ that somehow, they will fix this, and he’ll be able to get back to Atlantis.

 

The days crawl by. They drive all day, except when they have to stop and threaten to shoot people, stop and actually shoot people, stop and actually shoot Wraith, or maneuver the Jeeps around road obstacles. John thinks that’s the best part of the day for some of the airmen, being able to get out of the Jeeps and use some muscle, _do_ something. The Rockies especially are a fun and distracting time for all.

They’re attacked pretty much every time they come near a population center; apparently, once they subdued the military forces, all of the Wraith decided to go eat buffet style. Usually it’s just one or two of them, out on their own, seeing a bunch of people and thinking, _free lunch!_

Occasionally there are more, and sometimes they recognize John and Daniel’s group as a threat. They attack twice in Utah; no casualties the first time, but an airman and a sergeant, Flanagan and Stanford, die in the second. In Colorado, they lose O’Brian in the first attack, and Powell in the second, which happens when they’re detouring to avoid going anywhere near Colorado Springs.

Daniel drops down at their shared campfire the night after the second attack and says, “No one’s fault, we couldn’t have seen it coming, it’s a terrible thing but if we’d gone through Colorado Springs it might have been worse, I’m very sorry he’s gone.” He’s close enough for John to see the circles under his eyes, the fine lines under the dirt on his face.

“Rough day?” says John.

“People think I’m sensitive and caring.” Daniel rubs his eyes.

“It’s a curse,” says John, who had a reputation as a casual CO and so occasionally had to deal with things he _never wanted to hear about ever_ , back on Atlantis.

“Yeah,” says Daniel. “I’m considering developing a less approachable image.”

 

In Kansas, a couple of darts find them when they’re camped out for the night. They scatter and take whatever cover they can find—John ends up under one of the Jeeps, cursing Kansas and its fucking endless open fucking soybean fields—but the darts get Lachlan, Brighton, Nguyen, Schmitt, Carver, and Hernandez.

“That’s eleven dead,” says Daniel, head in his hands, voice muffled. “Because we’re going somewhere else. Maybe we should have just stayed in Nevada.”

“They knew we had a major facility there,” says John. “They’re probably sweeping the area regularly.” Well, maybe. “Anyway, we can’t stop now. There’s no cover in this fucking state.”

 

Daniel spends the mornings hopping from Jeep to Jeep, talking to their men and women, trying to keep any of them from going totally nuts. John spends the afternoons doing the same. For a couple of hours around lunchtime, they stay in the same Jeep. John drives, and Daniel reads books he’s stolen from bookstores along the way, turning pages with careful fingers, tuning everything else out. Sometimes John watches him and thinks about _War and Peace_ , wonders if he could just grab a copy and sit down with it again. He doesn’t think so.

John really works on getting to know the men, because it’s what you do, and because it’s stupid to command people whose strengths and weaknesses you don’t know. He’s been avoiding long-term plans, but he’s not going to be able to avoid thinking ahead forever, unless he wants to desert or die, so.

Thorman is a lieutenant—was a lieutenant, under the former government of this area of land, although John knows better than to say stuff like that out loud—who’s holding up well, among the best of them. No, she says, I didn’t have much family, sir. My aunt’s a tough old lady, I’m sure she made it. And if a Wraith got her, I bet she poisoned him. Yes, sir, I’m prepared to fight to the end to get these fuckers off our planet. No, sir, I have no plans to do anything stupid.

McConnell is a major. He’s the next ranking officer under John, but he’s quiet, careful, and he doesn’t look too enthusiastic about his new end-of-the-world assignment. When John talks to him, he’s by the book. Yes, sir. No, sir. I appreciate your talking to me, sir. But his eyes follow John, when he goes on to the next guy.

Xu is a sergeant, second-generation American, wishes he could check on his folks in Sacramento but knows it isn’t going to happen. He’s been at the SGC for six years and faced impending apocalypse before; he understands what’s going on. Yes sir, I’ll follow Dr. Jackson’s orders. No, sir, I don’t know all that much about the Wraith. But I’m learning, and his face is a mask. We’re all learning, sir.

Ellsworth is an airman, had a wife and a kid back in Colorado Springs. After the Wraith attack and the mountain’s explosion, pretty much nobody survived in the city; their best guess is that what’s left of it is occupied territory now. John doesn’t remember seeing Ellsworth around until just before they left that day, so he has the suspicion that Ellsworth went to find them and didn’t—or did. He says, Yes, sir, I want to kill the Wraith alien fucking bastards. Yes, sir, I will follow orders. Nothing else to do anymore, sir. His eyes are empty. John leaves him and moves on.

He learns all their names and ranks, a little something about every one of them, tries to work out which ones need watching, which ones probably won’t go insane within the first couple of weeks, and which ones he might actually be able to rely on to get things done.

It’s stressful. In addition to their little lunchtime drives, he ends up coming over to Daniel at the end of every evening, because no one’s going to bother them when it looks like they’re having a meeting. Daniel will say something like, “Probably about another week to go,” or, “At this point, I almost miss the Goa’uld,” or, “Why the _hell_ didn’t they include coffee with the emergency rations?” and John will sprawl on the ground, facing away from the main camp, and watch Daniel talk, and pretend for a little while that the group of grieving, desperate people behind him doesn’t exist.

 

Sometimes, instead of the broken world on either side, he lets himself think about the long cool hallways of Atlantis, the ocean sound around everything, the colored glass and lights, and his hands will clench on the steering wheel until he’s afraid his fingers will break.

On one of those days, he’s breathing slowly and carefully to keep himself from snapping and running for the hills, when Daniel clears his throat, quietly.

“You know,” he says, “some of the Wraith writing reminds me of a script that we saw once on P3X-498.”

And he just keeps on talking. John blinks, wonders for a second what the hell is going on—but Daniel _is_ an archaeology geek, at least theoretically, and this is his _thing_ , isn’t it? so he keeps driving and lets the words fall over and through and into his ears. They’re words like _logosyllabic_ , and _orthography_ , and _epigraphical analysis_ , and he has no idea what it all means, why _anyone_ would think it was important, but—

It’s sort of soothing. If he thinks about it hard enough, he’ll realize it reminds him of a mellower Rodney; so he doesn’t think, and he listens, and his hands slowly relax.

 

They never, thankfully, run into groups of Wraith too big to handle. John discovers that although Daniel is really good at shooting things, he isn’t a battlefield commander. No surprise there, and he takes John’s—well, John decides to think of them as _suggestions_ rather than _orders_ , because he’s pretty sure that’s how Daniel sees them, too. So John commands, and Daniel stays in the ranks and shoots as well as any of them, and despite the casualties, they beat every group of Wraith that’s stupid enough to come after them on the ground.

And it’s helpful. The only time these guys have ever encountered Wraith in the flesh was during the Cheyenne Mountain defense, which, even if they killed a bunch of the life-sucking bastards, was definitely a loss for their side. It’s good for morale, such as it is, to actually be able to take some of the Wraith down, to figure out that they do die, with enough bullets in them.

But they’ve lost eleven people, and John is not happy about how big a percentage _eleven_ is of their total force. Every time someone dies, John can see everyone looking around at their little group, doing the math, and thinking _at this rate, we aren’t going to last_. And watching the men looking at the ancient bodies—John has never been the best commander in the universe, but he _knows_ it’s his job to do something about those looks.

Having a destination helps. But John still kind of wishes they had a psychiatrist along with them.

“This sucks,” he says to Daniel by their campfire in Missouri, after the day of three— _three_ —Wraith attacks (only one casualty, but one was enough. And it was Michalowski. John liked Michalowski).

Daniel raises his eyebrows. “Yes,” he says, in his _duh_ voice. John is becoming familiar with that voice, and it sometimes causes him to wonder why no one, on any of the other sides _or_ on this one, has killed Dr. Jackson before now. (Possibly it has something to do with the fact that Daniel really is supernaturally good-looking, especially for a geek. John can’t help looking, sometimes, the same way he occasionally notices Ronon’s shoulders, or Teyla’s legs, or even Elizabeth’s mouth or Rodney’s ass. It’s instinct, and it’s not like he’s getting any anywhere else. And it’s a distraction from their situation, which, after all, sucks.)

“I’m waiting for a mass suicide or a mutiny,” says John. “I can’t talk these guys out of being depressed. The world’s overrun by _aliens_. What am I supposed to say, cheer up? It’ll be okay?”

“God knows,” says Daniel. “If you figure it out, tell me.”

Even after a nightmare week and a half living in each other’s pockets—feels like _years_ , at this point—John doesn’t know Daniel Jackson all that well. But even laying the good-looking part aside, he’s pretty fucking glad he has him around. He tries to picture doing this all by himself, and shudders.

 

In Ohio, Ellsworth commits suicide.

He’s up close with a Wraith, and he just drops his weapon. John sees it, but he can’t shoot the Wraith without shooting through Ellsworth, and his second of hesitation costs him another Wraith getting through his own guard. By the time he kills it and gets over to Ellsworth’s position, it’s over.

The Wraith is a little glazed over, happy and full. John shoots it full of bullets until it collapses and dies. A couple of the others have noticed, and he can feel the shock sort of rippling through the ranks.

The rest of the Wraith are dead pretty fast, and afterward everyone just stands around and stares at Ellsworth’s body. John’s thoughts are torn between _Jesus fuck_ and a semi-hysterical _and you thought morale was bad before_. His eyes lock with Daniel’s, but Daniel is just blinking at the body, not looking like he’s going to be much help.

“Okay,” says John finally, “volunteers?”

Masohar, who was about as close to a buddy as Ellsworth had, as far as John could see, and Thorman come forward. John gives them shovels and goes to sit with Daniel. He drops down close enough to feel Daniel’s body heat, an antidote to the dried-up husk twenty feet away. Daniel’s sweating, panting a little—John forces himself to calm down, and doesn’t watch him breathe.

They’re both quiet, watching the rest of the men, who’re mostly in shock. Masohar and Thorman dig silently, and John can hear every shovelful of dirt falling to the ground.

When the grave’s almost finished, Masohar says something to Thorman, leaves his shovel, and comes over to John and Daniel.

“He wouldn’t have told you this, sirs,” he says, looking uncomfortable, “but I—you should know. A Wraith got his baby. He saw his baby daughter—like that. And after that, well, I wouldn’t blame him. Sirs.”

“We don’t blame him, airman,” says Daniel, and his voice is soft.

John very carefully doesn’t crawl out of his skin while Masohar is watching. “No one would blame him,” he says instead, and Masohar nods.

“Thank you, sirs,” he says, and goes back to digging.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says John after he’s gone.

Daniel’s gone blank again, but he says, “I hate this.”

He doesn’t usually say stuff like that; but then, neither does John.

They hold a memorial service over the grave, and then they get in their Jeeps and start off again. John is not in the habit of praying, but he’d almost consider starting if it meant that he’d never have to see anything like that again.

 

They have to loot for their supplies. John doesn’t like it, the men don’t like it, and Daniel—aside from books, apparently— _really_ doesn’t like it, but they all know it’s necessary. So whenever they stop somewhere with stores, they try for nonperishable food, gasoline, and weapons (all of which are usually gone already, but sometimes they get lucky) and anything else they decide is useful. It turns out that they have a couple of tech guys with them, Kiehl and Jacobsen, both lieutenants and already buddies from before, and they find whatever electronics haven’t already been looted and load them into one of the Jeeps. John’s not absolutely convinced about this at first.

“What,” he says, “you think we’ll be getting emails after all this?”

“Actually, sir,” says Kiehl, “the Internet was originally created as a means of communication in the event of a nuclear war. It’s not going to disappear just because there was an alien invasion.”

“Oh,” says John, realizing once again that he has no idea how things like email actually _work_ —Rodney, he thinks, should be here, being disdainful—and says, “Well, go ahead, then.”

Weird.

He brings it up with Daniel, later.

“Oh, that’s absolutely true,” says Daniel, “and, of course, the Wraith aren’t interested in taking over things like that—I mean, they aren’t interested in _taking over_ at all. As long as the basic political and military infrastructure is gone and there aren’t any obvious technological accomplishments in use, like advanced weapons and transportation, they aren’t going to interfere.” He’s talking with his hands, getting into it.

This is the point at which John would usually roll his eyes and tell Rodney to shut up, but it’s the first time he’s really seen Daniel get excited, so he watches, fascinated. “It’s an interesting contrast with the Goa’uld,” Daniel continues, “who wanted power, who _wanted_ the infrastructure, with themselves at the top of it. All the Wraith want is food. They aren’t going to know or care that we’re communicating with each other unless it directly interferes with their food source.”

“Yeah,” says John, and now he’s depressed, “we’re their candy store. Who cares what we’re doing, as long as there’s six billion people running around for them to snack on.”

He has to wonder how many people there are now. And how long it’s going to take the Wraith to go through them all.

 

Even though the main thing John should be worrying about outside of their group—he’s pretty sure—are the dozen or so Hive ships in orbit, the main thing he _is_ worrying about is Elizabeth.

She was secreted away with the remnants of the world’s leaders, or whoever—Daniel seems to think that O’Neill was with them, so some military people, too—so it’s possible they’re alive, somewhere. Waiting, planning, working on taking Earth back, or maybe just trying to keep themselves safe until they can build up an army.

He knows they didn’t go to the alpha site, because the time between first seeing the Wraith ships and the mountain coming under attack was only a few hours—“We called you first thing,” Daniel said—and there just wasn’t _time_ to get people to Colorado, which is nicely ironic given their ability to cross millions of light-years in a couple of seconds. (And then the Wraith dialed in, and there was nowhere _anyone_ could go.) So they’re somewhere on Earth, and if John had any fucking idea of where to look, he’d be there right now. (He’d have to sneak away, because he’s pretty sure that if Daniel caught him deserting, he would be seriously unhappy, but Daniel, for all his experience, isn’t military, and John could do it. He thinks he’d be looking over his shoulder for a while afterward, though.) Once they get themselves set up, he knows what Kiehl and Jacobsen’s major priority is going to be, Internet-wise.

He doesn’t know why the hell he let her come through the Gate.

And Rodney—

He’s not thinking about Rodney.

 

Three weeks after the destruction of the SGC, they fight their way through another stretch of forest and two-lane highways and reach a hill covered in trees, the kind of hill New Englanders call a mountain because they don’t know any better. And underneath it is their new base of operations.

“Home sweet home,” says John, surveying the long gray corridors with a flashlight. “And now aren’t you glad we didn’t order curtains from the decorators?”

“We’re used to it, sir,” says Thorman, smiling a little. “It looks just like the SGC. Orders?”

So John assigns people to the tech guys to see what they can do about getting the electricity working and setting up the equipment, assigns other people to food stores, people to unpacking and inventorying everything in the Jeeps, more people to figuring out what kind of security this place can be set up with, and then he runs out of people, so he stops.

“Huh,” says Daniel. “We’ve got a base.”

“That’s usually what they call it, yeah,” says John. “We could call it something else if we wanted to, though. No one could stop us.”

And even with the whole apocalypse thing, just _saying_ those words gives John kind of a rush. It’s like how, in the back of his head where no one else would notice, he was secretly a little disappointed when Earth found Atlantis again after a year on their own.

“Names are important,” says Daniel absently. “If we call it a base, it is a base. Everyone will feel more secure.”

John would say that he wasn’t being serious—and who would take that seriously? Sometimes he thinks the linguistics geeks are the worst ones of all—but he’s pretty sure that Daniel’s already forgetting the conversation. His attention, at least, is on Kiehl, who’s walking past with an armful of wiring.

“Do I want to know what they’re doing with all of that?” Daniel asks after a second.

“Probably not,” says John. “I walked past Jordan halfway inside a wall panel, about ten minutes ago. I figured it was better not to ask.”

“Okay,” says Daniel. “Who knows. We might end up with cable.”

“What, television was originally meant to be a post-apocalyptic communications device, too?” says John. “I didn’t know that. I wonder if we’ll get MTV.”

Daniel laughs, and it’s maybe the first time John has seen him do it. It crinkles up his eyes and makes him look like a real person, in some real world somewhere. John grins. He learned a long time ago that television references can make some seriously unfunny things more funny.

Although it’s even better if there are aliens around to not understand the references, and that makes him think of Teyla and Ronon, and _seriously, John, good fucking call there_ , because they’re on Atlantis and free to make fun of every single one of the Star Trek series for the rest of their lives, and _not here_.

Daniel’s laughter fades out, and John says, “Hey, I think it’s your turn to pick a room. Hope you like gray.”

 

Once everything’s pretty much set up, John pays Kiehl and Jacobsen a visit.

“It’ll take us a while to get identities set up, sir,” says Kiehl. “It’s pretty crazy online right now. Think about all the freak Internet paranoid schizophrenics that existed before, and multiply that by a real alien invasion.”

“Fine,” says John, “but when you’re up and running, your first priority is to see if you can find anyone from the SGC or the government. Or any government. But _most especially_ Elizabeth Weir or General O’Neill.”

“Yes, sir,” says Kiehl.

“And any other resistance groups that might exist,” John adds, as an afterthought.

“We’ll see what we can do, sir,” says Jacobsen, “but let me tell you, I can already predict what it’s going to be like. We’re going to have to figure out who’s just sitting in their basement posting _Death to the Wraith!_ versus who’s being serious, who says they have actual manpower and ordinance, who’s lying about having manpower and ordinance, and then any of those guys might be Wraith or Wraith-allied humans.” He shakes his head.

John is used to tech people telling them they can’t do things, when what they really mean is _we can’t make things as beautifully perfect as our experience in lab simulations tells us is theoretically possible_. The trick is to pretend to be listening, unless it’s a crisis situation, in which case they just need their asses kicked out of Ivory Tower Land. “Do what you can,” he says, and leaves them to it.

 

Next up is a strategy meeting. They meet up in the room that Daniel’s picked for himself.

“Gray,” says John. “I really like it. Can you give me the number of your interior designer?”

“Yeah, that’s…funny,” says Daniel absently, like he started the sentence and then forgot about it, and the end came out on autopilot. He’s taken the opportunity to shower in something other than rain for the first time in a while, and he’s half-dressed and damp, sexy in a military communal-shower-porn sort of way ( _stop that_ , John tells himself), sitting cross-legged and bent over reports he’s somehow managed to make people generate. “These tech guys of yours are very efficient.”

“You know,” says John, “technically they’re your guys, too.” He looks around for a place to sit; the room is devoid of furniture. Rather than the concrete floor, he sits on the bunk next to Daniel. He’s conscious, suddenly, of how much _he_ needs a shower.

“ _Technically_ ,” says Daniel, still fixed on the papers in his lap “I’m not military, so I can’t be their commanding officer. But I won’t debate the point. These tech guys of _ours_. And someone came up with this map, have you seen it? It’s very helpful. I have no idea where they got it. I don’t even know where they got some of the major equipment they’re using.”

“A couple of the bases we went by,” says John. “What map?”

Daniel holds it up between two fingers, not looking up. It’s a map of the area: topography, population centers, roads, and so on, out a hundred miles in each direction, pre-invasion. “I think we should keep whatever operations we’re going to be running outside of this perimeter at the very least, to keep the Wraith from focusing any activity on this area,” says Daniel.

“Sure,” John says, and, “So, operations. We kill as many Wraith as we can, we—capture some darts, maybe?” They’re forty guys in Vermont, he doesn’t say. What the hell kind of effect can they have?

“Well,” says Daniel, and he finally looks at John, “we don’t have anywhere to put darts right now,” with a perfectly straight face. “I think we should try networking, first. Obviously we’re too small an operation to make any real dent in the Wraith forces, and we’d need ships and more weapons to do anything in orbit, where it’s all happening.”

“That’s Kiehl and Jacobsen’s thing,” says John.

“Right,” says Daniel, “so what we do until they get something up and running is reconnaissance.”

Which makes sense. “Figure out which cities are the furthest gone, which ones might have some kind of infrastructure left,” says John. “See if we can find bases with leftover munitions.”

“Exactly,” says Daniel. “We’ll take a day or two to get ourselves fully settled in here, and then we’ll send out a team. Somewhere not too big, first. Maybe Hartford or Harrisburg.”

“Sounds good,” says John, and wow, it’s almost like they have a plan.

 

The road trip had some effect; the men have started to make friends, form groups, hang out together. John’s in favor; hopefully a—support network, or whatever a shrink would call it, will help with morale and maybe prevent more suicides, _please God_. And John is grateful for Daniel, because how often does a commanding officer actually _get_ someone to hang out with on equal terms in situations like these?

“So,” says John, many drinks in. “You did it.”

Last night, John took a Jeep and slipped up to Burlington, where he left the Jeep under the cover of the forest and went into the city on foot, crept around, and stole as much alcohol as he could find intact, until he couldn’t carry any more. Since it looked like the guys were starting to become buddies, it was time to do something to take their minds off of the end of the world. So they’re celebrating their new home sweet home.

John and Daniel spent a carefully-calculated amount of time with them, and then made their escape. Now they’re in Daniel’s room, which has sort of become their hangout place, and soon after they got there, John decided it was time to get to know his co-leader a little better. So far, he’s discovered that Daniel makes a face whenever he takes a shot, which is pretty funny to watch.

“I did a lot of things,” says Daniel. He toys with his shot glass, spinning it around with a finger on the rim. His hands are careful, precise.

“Ascended,” John says. “Became a white energy being thing.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Daniel flips the shot glass in the air, catches it. “I don’t remember it.”

“Oh,” says John, and after a second, “I never got it. Lots of meditation involved, it was kind of boring.”

“Right now I might not mind going back,” says Daniel, and laughs a little, stretching over John to reach for the bottle. “Despite the company.”

This is not something that John is for, but he doesn’t think Daniel can just do it on command. For one thing, John’s pretty sure he’d have been gone by now.

“I could’ve done it,” he says. “They offered.”

“Yeah, we do that sometimes,” says Daniel. He takes another shot, looking abstracted.


	2. Chapter 2

When everyone’s hangovers are pretty much gone, they start in on business.

They’ve got a good idea of the general state of affairs from their road trip. Cities are decimated. People are starving. The Wraith are everywhere, and killing enough to keep any of them from following their group back from wherever they are is hard work. It’s harder and harder to loot stuff, when other looters have usually gotten there first. John is already living in fear of the first time he has to give the order to start gathering firewood. He _has_ given the order to start acquiring seeds and things, just in case. They’re _not_ going to start on farm animals yet, if only because John has no idea where they’d keep them.

Rasmussen has started a little garden, though, with stuff he apparently swiped while they were on the road—John had given standing orders to _take whatever might be useful, as long as no one else is using it_. He thought about ordering them not to take anything for personal use, but eventually he decided that morale was more important than discipline, on that count. It wasn’t like money or DVD players were going to do them any good, now. 

So Rasmussen has some potted plants that will eventually provide vegetables and things. John commends him for initiative, and then goes to their makeshift gym area and works out until his brain is no longer screaming at the implications.

He has Kiehl and Jacobsen working around the clock, and he’s assigned them as many guys as they want, for the duration of their search for help. John’s confident. He is.

“So what happens when they get done with Earth?” he asks Daniel over their MRE lunch one day, out of morbid curiosity. He hasn’t been up on the happenings in the Milky Way, lately.

“We kept our list of Gate addresses in the Cheyenne Mountain computers, mirrored at the Pentagon,” says Daniel, “so I’m hoping they won’t know where to go. But—well, we have friends. When the gate doesn’t engage, eventually someone’s going to come looking for us, and the Wraith are going to figure out that there are many more inhabited planets in this galaxy.” Daniel pauses, and gets sort of an odd look on his face. “I wonder what would happen if a Wraith tried to feed on a Goa’uld. Or a Jaffa.”

“What about your bad guys?” John knows their name—“The Ori?”

“Their Priors, anyway. I’d guess that, right now, if the Ori know about this, they’re just happy that Earth has been taken out of commission; we were pretty much the only serious opposition they had. Although I imagine they’re mourning the loss of six billion potential worshippers.” Daniel frowns. “If the Wraith start branching out into the galaxy, they might get angry. I can’t imagine them wanting their _entire_ religious pool being eaten, and they’re certainly powerful enough to oppose the Wraith.”

John’s noticed that when Daniel explains something, he has moments of talking so fast, he almost trips over what he’s saying. It’s probably a good thing he didn’t go into teaching. “Maybe they’ll kill each other off.”

“Mmm, here’s hoping—although I can’t imagine we’ll be around for it, no matter how it goes.”

“You know what I like about you?” says John. “You’re such an optimist.”

For some reason, that starts Daniel laughing so hard his eyes tear up.

 

But John’s finding it kind of hard to put on a happy face about this—no surprise considering the situation, but it’s harder after a week of Internet networking finds nothing and nobody that would be able to help them. They have a hard time even finding anybody who can help themselves.

A week is nothing, John tells himself. There have to be other resistance groups out there. There have to be some official remnants of _something_ , some governmental and/or Stargate-related organizational fragments. It’ll just take a little time for them to run into each other, that’s all.

 _And then what?_ says his brain. _They send you back to Atlantis with a “thanks for all your hard work, see you again sometime?”_ The Stargate is gone. The _Daedalus_ was due on Earth a few days after the attack; if it isn’t here by now, it’s probably destroyed. John is stuck here.

He can’t let himself think about that. Because if he thinks too hard, he’s going to end up like Ellsworth.

And then Kiehl and Jacobsen come up with something.

 

There’s no way to know for sure, says Kiehl. John tries very, very hard to listen to reason, and he’s reasonably sure he has enough precautions in place, but—these people are probably maybe possibly what’s left of the U.S. government and the Stargate program, and they want to set up a meeting. His brain is stuck on the _thank God_ part.

“They say they have command personnel with them,” says Kiehl, who’s practically vibrating in his chair, “but they won’t say who, for security reasons. And they say they’re gathering forces—what’s left of several countries’ military—for a big attack. They aren’t going to tell us where they’re based, of course, and we haven’t told them anything, sirs, not even who you are. But they want to arrange a meeting, and they’re fine with whatever number of people we want to bring.”

Good. Good. John takes deep, careful breaths and tries not to think about Elizabeth, tries not to want this too much.

Daniel listens to Kiehl, and reads the report they come up with, and looks at the chat logs, and says, “It can’t be this easy.” And it’s cautious and sarcastic, but there’s hope in there, and John can see it, because he recognizes the fellow feeling of _I do not want to have to do this, and if someone else is here to do it for me, you can have my children unto whatever generation you want._

 

John makes the announcement to their people. Kiehl and Jacobsen get a lot of spontaneous hugs. One of the airmen kisses Jacobsen full on the mouth, and John’s pretty sure she’s not the only one who wants to. He grins at them all, picks Davis, Sanchez, Rasmussen, Greene, and Kennedy to come along, and tells Kiehl to arrange a meeting spot, somewhere relatively far away. Kiehl picks Arkansas.

“Great,” John says, not really serious about being irritated. “Another road trip.”

“This one has a point,” says Daniel. “Suck it up. We’ll have more cover than the Midwest gave us, and you can kill a couple of Wraith every time we take a rest stop if you want.”

“Huh,” says John. The idea appeals. Also, “We? You don’t want to stay here and hold down the fort?”

“And do what? I’ll come with you. You might want someone with negotiating experience.”

“Hey, I’ve negotiated,” says John. He’s not all that great at it, but really, Teyla told him—only a couple of weeks ago, and fuck, it feels like it’s been years already—that he was getting better at it. Anyway, he’s definitely the second-best negotiator on their gate team.

Which no longer exists. He’s here on Earth. Where Daniel is giving him a nicely eloquent look.

“I have,” he says.

“I’m sure you have,” says Daniel. “You’ll forgive me if I come anyway.”

 

Daniel, John is discovering, can be kind of a sarcastic asshole. Which he wouldn’t have expected, judging from what he’d heard about the golden boy of the SGC. Although Rodney thought he was “Kind of abrupt at best, a self-absorbed jerk at worst,” but it’s usually best to take what Rodney thinks— _thought_ , John corrects himself savagely—about people with a grain of salt. Daniel’s reputation seems to suggest that he’s only on this Earth through a selfless desire to save the world, without which he would have stayed Ascended like the divine being he was meant to be.

Or something like that, anyway. Elizabeth thought he was “difficult to get to know,” which John should have realized was diplomatic slang for “asshole.”

But the thing is, it’s all _true_. John’s read the mission reports—the whole Anubis thing was definitely in the highlights version O’Neill handed to him, and half the stuff about Ascension was circled, sometimes in red—so he knows what happened. Daniel really _is_ on this Earth only because of a selfless desire to—well, kill Anubis and save the world.

But he’s also an asshole. Which, John has to admit, he likes.

 

They get ready to leave, and John leaves McConnell the major formally in charge. He thinks about it a little, first—they haven’t talked much, but John has the impression that McConnell doesn’t like him. But he can’t bypass the chain of command without a good reason, and _my 2IC doesn’t like me_ doesn’t really fly, so he just does it and hopes that McConnell doesn’t sell everyone to the Wraith while they’re gone.

“Hey,” says John to Daniel, once they’ve started off. “So the Goa’uld are gods.”

“Yes,” says Daniel. _Duh_ , says his face.

“So I was wondering. Did Jesus have glowing eyes?”

It’s a question he’s been wanting to ask for a while, but he wasn’t about to pitch it to Elizabeth, who’s always seemed vaguely spiritual in a way John never really got, or to Rodney, who wouldn’t take it seriously.

Not that John takes it seriously, really. He’s just curious.

“Well, it’s complicated,” says Daniel, and starts in on a long, involved explanation about the time Jesus operated in, the Goa’uld they’ve seen who stayed behind on Earth, the nature of Jesus’ character as described in the New Testament, how that contrasts to the nature of God in the Old Testament, how the character and texts about _that_ God compare to the character and texts of gods that they _know_ were Goa’uld—

“So, you don’t know,” says John.

“Well, I _personally_ don’t think so, but really—nope. No idea,” says Daniel.

“Okay,” says John.

Usually he doesn’t really have an opinion on God, one way or another. It’s just that he’d be happier if he knew that Ascension wasn’t the be-all and end-all.

 

The drive takes a few days. Daniel has a notebook and some books he stole from a few different stores on the way to Vermont, and he’s got them open, spread on the dashboard and around his seat, and he’s taking notes. John has no idea what the hell he could be working on, given their situation, but he’s pretty engrossed in whatever it is.

John mostly tries not to think. He watches the scenery until that gets too depressing, and then he just lets his brain drift. Surfing. _War and Peace_. Running with Ronon. Daniel reading in the morning, turning pages under the light filtering through their tent wall. Flying helicopters over miles of Antarctic ice. Johnny Cash.

The mindless thing is good, until they’re on one of the stretches where there are too many wrecked and abandoned cars clogging the road, and they’ve got to go off it for a ways. The Jeep jerks and bounces its way around a turn, and one of Daniel’s books takes a flying leap off the dashboard and lands corner-first on John’s leg.

“Ow,” says John. The book has flopped open. John sees drawings of hieroglyphics, birds and jars and snakes marching along inside a ragged outline. “Is that Goa’uld?” Although why the hell Daniel needs to translate Goa’uld _now_ is a mystery, unless he knows something he isn’t telling John, which would…suck.

“No,” says Daniel, “or, not strictly. It’s ancient Egyptian, a collection of papyri. I got it from UPenn when we stopped.”

John blinks. “Oh.”

There’s a pause, in which John does not say anything about anything, until Daniel says forcefully, “No one is going to _do_ archaeology anymore. No one’s at the universities, no one’s learning, no one’s caring about anything but staying alive. I don’t know if the original of this piece of papyrus—this, this record made by humans who _successfully overthrew the Goa’uld—_ even exists anymore. I don’t know how much of _Egypt_ exists anymore. So I’m going to work on it, even if no one ever sees it but me.”

“Okay,” says John. “You…go ahead and do that.”

Daniel takes the book back. “I will,” he says, and subsides into his notes.

Huh, John thinks. If Daniel spent a lot of time talking like that, back on Cheyenne Mountain, maybe he can understand a little better where the reputation comes from.

 

In the middle of the second night, when they’re stopped, Greene sees someone out in the dark. His, “Stay where you are!” brings John and Daniel both awake, weapons up, until Rasmussen takes a cautious step forward and says, “Okay, come forward, but keep your hands where I can see them. It’s just a kid, sirs.”

It’s a boy, fourteen or fifteen. He’s filthy and bloody and freaked out, and he’d been about to run away but he froze when Greene pointed the gun. While they’re asking him questions, he slowly gets a little less wild-eyed, his breathing slows down, and by the time they’re done, he looks happy to be talking to rational humans.

His name’s Tom, his family was taken by the Wraith, and he’s afraid to show his face because the Wraith are everywhere—which is true, John’s been stopping to kill a couple every half hour or so, while Daniel loses his place and complains—and also because the crazies are out in force. Apparently it’s a full-out race war in some areas down here. Tom’s afraid of white people because they might shoot him; he’s afraid of black people because they might draft him to shoot other people.

“Take me with you,” he begs.

John and Daniel exchange looks. “One second,” says John, remembering a beautiful dark-haired woman, on a Hive ship a million miles away.

A brief conversation and a seriously irritated Daniel later, John says, “Look, we’re headed somewhere that might be more dangerous than here. We’re going to get there tomorrow and head back pretty soon after, if nothing goes horribly wrong. How about you wait for us. We’ll camp out in this same place in two or three nights, and you can come with us then. Fair?”

In their brief conversation, Daniel said things like _scared kid_ , and _God knows what could happen_ , and _We don’t have to tell him anything_. John said _Uncleared civilian_ and _Spy for the Wraith_ and _Anyway, we don’t want him killed if this is all a trap, do we?_ John won, but he thinks Daniel’s pissed at him.

Tom says it’s okay.

“I got a hiding place right near here,” he says. “I won’t be doing anything I wouldn’t be doing anyway, waiting for you.”

 _See_ , John looks at Daniel. Daniel smiles a tight little I-hate-you smile.

“You can stay with us tonight,” he says, without looking at John first.

“Thanks,” says the kid, and Daniel gives him an MRE which he wolfs down, and a blanket.

 

Davis is waking John up for his watch when he hears one of the Jeep’s engines.

“The hell?” he starts, but he isn’t surprised at all to see Daniel’s lost little kid in one of the driver’s seats, getting ready to gun it and get the hell out of there. John can just barely see his wild grin, teeth glinting in the moonlight.

But Rasmussen, who was sleeping closest to the Jeep, is awake and leaping. He hits the backseat just before the kid takes off; John’s up and running after, Davis following on his heels. They see the smaller figure tossed out, rolling on the ground, and the Jeep slows down and turns around.

John catches up with Tom, pulls him up by the collar of his T-shirt, shakes him a little. “That was a mistake,” he says. “I _would_ have taken you with us, because Daniel would have made my life miserable if I didn’t, and you might have been better off. But instead, you’re an idiot.”

“Fuck you,” says the kid, and John gives him a shove. He doesn’t need more of a hint than that, and he takes off running.

Rasmussen and Davis are standing next to John. He says, “I think we’ll have four people on watch for the rest of tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” says Rasmussen.

“Good catch there, by the way,” says John.

“I’m a light sleeper, sir,” Rasmussen says. John remembers from the cross-country trip that he’s one of the ones with nightmares.

Daniel’s waiting for them back at camp.

“You happy?” John asks. “For all we know, he was a scout for a group of crazies.”

“He was frightened, angry, and starving,” says Daniel calmly. “I wish I could have given him some food before he left.”

“Right,” says John. “Go back to sleep before I have to shoot you.”

Daniel raises an eyebrow. “Okay.” He lies back down.

John rubs his forehead.

“Want me to join you for this watch, sir?” Rasmussen asks. “Since I’m awake already.”

“Sure,” says John. “Will you help me strangle him in his sleep?”

“Sorry, sir,” says Rasmussen. “I sort of like Dr. Jackson.”

John sighs. “Nobody’s any fun tonight.”

 

They set out again in the morning, almost there. Daniel’s put away his notes and is staring contemplatively out at the horizon. John keeps their Jeep at the rear for the first leg and spends his time trying not to choke on exhaust and making sure Tom and/or Tom’s potential co-conspirators aren’t following them. He doesn’t see anything.

Before they reach the meeting spot, John takes the lead. When they’re a mile away, everyone’s warily watching the surroundings.

At half a mile, they stop and go on foot. They’re in a forest, which is all the better for camouflage. John notices absently that while ordinary Daniel is sort of a klutz, Daniel concentrating is much less so; he moves along in a crouch, weapon ready, like he was trained alongside the rest of them.

They approach the meeting place, weapons out and ready. No one shoots at them, no Wraith jump out of the trees, nothing blows up. Also, no one’s there.

“Are we early?” John mutters.

“Nope,” says Daniel next to him. “Right on time. Maybe they’re late.”

“I _so_ hate being stood up,” says John. “And on a first date, too.”

“That’s what you get when you do the Internet thing, sir,” says Sanchez. “Tried it with my last couple dates,” he grimaces, “didn’t work out.”

“I keep hearing about how people met their soulmates online,” says Davis. “I think it’s a conspiracy to make people who suck at computers feel bad.”

Daniel looks like the whole conversation is a fascinating anthropological experience. John rolls his eyes and watches the trees.

And just a couple minutes later, there’s movement. Two shapes in the trees, resolving themselves into a man and a woman, stepping out where John can see them. Everyone’s shut up by now, and John’s watching the two carefully. They’re just standing there, looking around, waiting. They have sidearms, but nothing bigger than a handgun that John can see.

Daniel’s watching him. Waiting for his signal, John realizes after a second, which is new and different—but Daniel’s never been a field commander.

John signals Daniel, Davis, Greene and Kennedy out to talk. Sanchez, Rasmussen and John cover them—just because they can’t see anyone else doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Daniel walks up to the two, and John can read the hello-we-are-peaceful-explorers body language; old habits die hard. Davis is a step behind him, Greene and Kennedy behind her, ready for trouble, positioning themselves to give John and company a clear shot if they need to take it.

Daniel talks. John can’t hear it, but he can see the nonthreatening posture, empty hands held out, Daniel taking small steps forward. The two people look friendly, but John’s been burned by friendly-looking people many, many times before, and beyond the friendly, there’s…something. They don’t look like they recognize Daniel, which means they didn’t work at the SGC any time in the last ten years, and while that doesn’t automatically mean—

—there’s a noise, a whine, a far-off _familiar_ whine, coming from the sky and moving in closer, and now Davis has heard it, she’s looking up and reaching out to get Daniel’s attention. 

The Wraith are coming, and it could be a coincidence, but their contacts are looking up too, and they don’t look surprised, they don’t look _worried_ —

John comes up, aiming his P-90; he can see Sanchez and Rasmussen out of the corner of his eye, doing the same while he yells, “Daniel! Get out of there!”

Daniel spins around—turning his back on the _hostiles_ , idiot, idiot—and stares at John. John points frantically upward, and then Davis grabs Daniel’s arm as they’re all backing away and pulls him along with her.

The two of them are standing there, and the woman has this look of—total despair. She knows what’s going to happen, oh yeah.

The man is worse. He looks like he’s having a religious _vision_ , face turned up, arms to his sides with palms out, waiting for the Wraith to land.

Except they don’t _have_ to land, and John swears at himself for getting distracted while he shouts, “Split up! Get to cover!”

The other five take off instantly, although Davis gives Daniel one last shove before she vanishes behind a tree. Daniel stumbles into John, still trying to look over his shoulder and saying something.

John grabs his arm—“ _Wraith worshippers_ ,” Daniel’s saying, “John, he said”— and starts to run.Daniel finally— _finally—_ clues in and starts running with him, which means John gets both hands free, hallelujah.

After a second, Daniel pants, “Where are we going?” which is about when John figures out the downside to Daniel’s impressive concentration skills.

“Cover,” he says tightly. “Did you hear the darts coming? They’ll sweep us up if we’re out in the open.” He’s scanning for a cave, a hole, a fallen tree, anything. The whine is getting louder, running up to a scream.

“Oh,” says Daniel, and then John sees a spot, just a hole in the ground, but big enough for the two of them, a couple of big bushes over it, no way is anyone going to see them from the air. He steers Daniel over to it, pushes him in first, slides in behind him.

They’re pressed together and it’s hot and they’re going to be covered in dirt and probably there are bugs crawling around beneath their clothes already, but John’s ass isn’t hanging out, and that’s all he was asking for.

“The things he was saying, John—” Daniel’s saying, low-voiced, words stumbling over themselves, “inviting the Wraith to come and destroy us, and him, if it was their will—it’s a cult, it’s mass suicide—”

John is straining to hear the dart’s scream. “I _know all that_ , Daniel,” he grinds out.

“Oh,” says Daniel, and then, irritated, “couldn’t you have said something about it before?”

 

They wait it out. The darts whine and scream overhead, some Wraith actually go past on foot, spiders crawl into John’s BDUs, dirt grinds into his skin every time he shifts, and Daniel is too hot and distracting against his back.

He doesn’t start in on the Wraith worshippers again, though, not even to grill John about them, which makes John happy, right up until lying in silence starts being uncomfortable.

 

Eventually, the whine has died off into the distance, and no more Wraith are tromping by the hiding spot, so John figures it’s safe to leave their little hollow to the spiders. He clicks on his radio. “This is Sheppard. Who’s out there?”

Rasmussen and Sanchez check in.

John tells them to start the search from their end, and turns to Daniel. “Back me up,” he says. “We’re looking for the rest of them.”

“If they were caught up by the dart’s beam, they’re not going to be—”

“I _know that_ , thanks,” John grinds out. He is _never_ bringing Daniel with him on a mission again.

“Okay,” says Daniel. “You take point. I’ve got your six.”

John moves out. He does have to admit that when Daniel’s paying attention, his ten years of field experience really show. It’s _getting_ him to pay attention, John thinks, that’s the problem.

They work their way back to the meeting spot, John trying to figure out which way he went while he was running for his life. They don’t see any more Wraith, which probably means they’ve either given up or spread their search over a larger area. Thank God, John thinks, that Kiehl didn’t mention Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard’s name. The Wraith might give up on seven random humans, but John’s a little too famous to just let go.

He has no idea if they’re even close to the right place when they find a crumbling skeleton of a person, sprawled out in a few pieces over the ground. The Wraith-worshippers are next to her, the woman kneeling, the man sitting cross-legged.

John has the woman, before he can remember the sequence of movements that brought her up against him, drew his sidearm, pressed it against her temple. “Give me one reason not to pull this trigger,” he says into her ear.

She takes a ragged breath; he can feel her shuddering through her shirt. “No,” she says.

Daniel bends down to the body, pulls out the dogtags. “Davis.” He comes up beside John; he’s looking at the man. “Why do you do it?” he asks. “Why worship them?”

“It’s the natural order,” says the man; he looks ecstatic, eyes wide, hair falling in fine blond tangles into his eyes. “They’re our predators. No one who’s ever eaten food has a right to say they’re evil.”

“Hate to break it to you,” says John, “but Wraith? Not natural.”

“They purify us,” he says, not listening, “bring us back down to our natural state, as animals. So many people thought that humans were _superior_ , before. We ruled supreme. Well, not anymore.” He laughs.

“Yeah, that’s fucked-up,” says John, and the woman shudders against him again. He doesn’t get it until he hears her, in choked-off spasms. Laughing.

“But it isn’t unprecedented,” says Daniel. “Cults, destructive gods. It’s nothing new. I doubt we’ll be able to reason with him.”

“He’s crazy,” says the woman. “We’re all crazy. The world ended, what the hell do you _expect_? Apocalypse now. We’re all dead anyway. It’s better than being one of their victims.”

“It’s destiny,” says the man. “Embrace it. We’re paying for our hubris. We’ve found our purpose. We’re _food_.” He laughs again. “It’s amazing. I never would have thought, would you? But it’s _right_. It’s _real_. Look at her,” he motions to Davis’ ancient body, “she knows. She could tell you, if she could still talk. I watched, it was—”

John shoots him. Straight through the heart; he hits the ground a second later, dead. John looks at the woman.

“Just do it,” she says.

He lets her go.

 

They rendezvous back at the Jeeps. “They got Davis,” John says shortly. Sanchez and Rasmussen nod, unhappy and unsurprised.

They mount a search for Greene and Kennedy. John doesn’t expect to find them. They don’t.

 

They start driving again. It’s silent, long long hours of quiet, John angry at himself and Davis and the fucking Wraith and the fucking people on _the Wraith’s fucking side_ , and Daniel sitting in the passenger seat, with his hieroglyphics. Like nothing happened, except he keeps stopping, pen dangling from his fingers while he stares out at the burned countryside.

 

When they get back, John thinks, he needs to sits down with a piece of paper and a Sharpie and write, DO NOT ENDANGER YOURSELF AND OTHERS BECAUSE YOU WANT OUT OF HERE and tape it to the wall next to his bed.

 

Back in Vermont, they have to tell everyone what happened. It is one of the single most excruciating experiences of John’s life.

Afterward, he and Daniel get drunk again, but this time they do it in their separate rooms. John spends most of the evening trying to forget his people’s faces when they heard the news.

 

Eventually, they drag themselves out of their hangovers and back into this nightmare that, somehow, is their lives.

It’s time to scale back a little, they decide, and work on _not_ getting their entire operation wiped out before they start. It makes John twitch, because this is it, this means they’re settling in for the long haul, but—it’s the smart thing to do.

“We never had to think about it that way before,” he mutters, half-complaining. But there’s not a lot of point in saying _I don’t want to be here, it was better before,_ because, duh.

“The Stargate program had a propensity toward getting itself into situations where all-or-nothing one-shots were good ideas,” says Daniel. “Eventually, I think, people started thinking up heroics before they considered other solutions. I thought about doing a statistical analysis on the methods we’ve all used to handle end-of-the-world situations over the years and sending it to the Joint Chiefs, but I never really had the time.”

“Also no one would have read it,” says John.

“That never stopped a good academic,” says Daniel. “Besides, it’s true and it’s relevant. And right now, we need to keep a low profile and test out our surroundings.”

“We actually did try that on Atlantis,” says John. “Pretended to blow up the city and planned on staying out of sight. Didn’t last very long, though.”

So they’re going to check out the major cities, then, see how many Wraith are hanging around, what their alertness level is, if there are any NID, SGC, CIA, FBI, USAF, or whatever other acronyms’ goodies lying around for them to pick up.

“And we should have Kiehl and Jacobsen troll for scientists,” says John. “If there’s one thing I learned on Atlantis, it’s that you need scientists to make the really cool bombs.”

Daniel looks pained at that, but he nods. “Okay. Kiehl and Jacobsen to look for scientists.’

“Carefully,” John adds.

No one is happy with the techies, right now. John’s had to put Davis’s friends on different assignments so they wouldn’t work themselves up to cornering Kiehl and Jacobsen in the gym, and he’s had to be careful who he assigned to work the computers. They’re all being careful too, though, Kiehl and Jacobsen most of all.

 

So they really are settling in for the long haul.

If John had a plane, or a helicopter, or a puddlejumper, or _anything_ that flew, he’d take it up and let that calm him down. If he was on Atlantis, he could go sit out on a balcony somewhere and stay there until someone needed him.

As it is, he’s stuck underground, concrete everywhere, with a bunch of airmen he’s having a _really_ hard time making himself like, if only because he’s slowly becoming certain they’re all going to die pretty soon, and Daniel. And this is it. Maybe for years.

Please God, don’t let it be years.

In between their planning and strategy sessions, Daniel holes up with his hieroglyphics. John uses their rudimentary gym equipment. This leads to meetings where John’s sweaty and irritated that he had to wait forty-five minutes for some weights to be free, and Daniel’s preoccupied and doodling verb forms in the corners of his notes.

Which, in turn, leads to interactions like the one on the third day after they get back from Arkansas, when John says, “I just think,” calmly, gritting his teeth, “that we should be able to find _some_ way to be more effective.”

And Daniel, who’s been staring down at his doodles, pauses with a suggestion of great abstraction before looking up and saying, “What?”

John has to count to ten in French before repeating himself. At which point Daniel raises his eyebrows and says, sarcastically, “I’m open to suggestions.”

And John’s left contemplating the horror of an operation where he has to try to be the brains—witness what happens, example A for _Arkansas_ —and he’s stupidly, helplessly furious at Daniel, because what happened to the guy who came back from the dead to save humanity?

He’s almost ready to say something like that out loud. But before he opens his mouth, Daniel takes a deep breath and seems to pull himself together and says, “Okay, wait. I’m—sorry. Give me a minute.”

John waves at him, _whatever, take your time_. He’s busy trying to calm himself down, wondering when he imprinted on Daniel as his own personal savior. Meanwhile Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes, looks like he’s taking deep breaths. When he opens his eyes, he says, “So we’re considering small, two- or three-man teams exploring medium-sized population centers, until we’re confident that teams won’t be slaughtered or followed back here. Then we’ll work up to larger missions.”

“Yes,” says John. “This is what we’ve been saying all along.”

“I wasn’t really listening before,” says Daniel. “Here,” and he hands John the hieroglyphic book.

John takes it, and wants to throw it away, leave it outside, but after their meeting is over he brings it to his room, sets it next to his bed.

This is too important to fuck up, and John can’t depend on Daniel. Daniel has his own motivations, his independent feelings—he’s lost his whole _base_ , for Christ’s sake, he can’t even be as stable as John—and he blows off military discipline for teenage thieves, tunes out long-term planning in favor of _archaeology_. John can’t depend on Daniel’s opinions, and he can’t get used to doing what Daniel says, and he can’t think Daniel looks sexy in BDUs, and he _definitely_ can’t panic if Daniel flakes out. Because it’s impractical, it’s dangerous, it’s fucking _stupid_.

Not that any of those things has ever stopped him before.

 

John takes Vautour, Saks, and Asato to Worcester. There are Wraith—there are Wraith everywhere—but they’re mostly solo or in small groups, and it looks like they’re just wandering the city looking for snacks. John kills ten or so, walking around, and by then the rest of them know that something’s going on, and they attack in a group. This leads to hide-and-go-seek tag, with John, Asato, Saks, and Vautour running around buildings and under bridges, through abandoned living rooms, trying to avoid—and ignore; there’s no way to save them all, and saving some is a good way to start a mob—the little huddles of people. Broken glass litters the ground, houses are falling in on themselves, stores are cleaned out. They start at least one fire, but no one gets life-sucked—being the attackers rather than the defenders has something to do with that, John thinks—and they kill most of the Wraith. 

It’s basically useless, but it’s also the most fun John has had in a long, long time.

 

When they get back, John showers and heads automatically for Daniel’s room, and he’s halfway through his report (summarized: _when can I do it again?_ ) when he thinks about being impractical and stupid. And then he thinks about Daniel’s strategies, his ideas, the way he moves in a firefight, what the men think of him. What world leaders have thought of him. What many, many all-powerful enemies have thought of him. What _John_ thinks of him.

And now Daniel’s looked up, one eyebrow raised, wondering what he’s stopped, and he opens his mouth and goes on with the report.

 

So now it’s been over a month, and they’re hiding out, killing the Wraith a few at a time.

The problem with this war, John thinks, is that the Wraith don’t really _need_ to come to Earth. Antarctica, Cheyenne Mountain, and Area 51 are gone, and if anyone else has a bunch of Wraith-destroying weapons, they’re sitting on them until some undisclosed future time. So the Wraith hang out in their ships and eat takeout, and there’s nothing anybody on the ground can do about it. The only ones they can really kill are the ones who like to go grocery shopping for themselves. 

John’s gone over it and over it and _over_ it since Arkansas, and he can’t figure out what else to do. It’s like they’re stuck at the lowest level of the video game, where they don’t have any cool guns or special powers, and all they can kill is minions. Sometimes, when he’s staring at the darkness where his concrete ceiling theoretically is, John assigns point values. Staff weapon, ten points. Wraith stunner, twenty. P-90, twenty-five. Zats are useless against the Wraith, which kind of sucks because John thinks they’re cool. Rocket launchers waver between fifty points and two hundred, depending on how pissed John is, versus his awareness of the need to stay hidden. If he falls asleep before he’s done with hand-held weapons, it’s a good night.

 

“Great,” says Daniel, after Worcester, Harrisburg, and Providence have all gone all right. “One or two more of these, and then maybe we’ll try for Boston.”

“Great,” John echoes. “Just…great.”

 

But then Kiehl and Jacobsen come up with info on a former NID scientist—real, Jacobsen swears, he even visited Area 51 sometimes when Jacobsen was stationed there, absolutely not a plant, no-way no-how unless-he’s-been-converted-in-the-last-month-sir.

Right.

They talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. Finally Daniel says, “I know the precedent is not good, but this is an entirely different situation. We’re forewarned, forearmed, and we’ve given no indication that we’re actually going to meet this guy to anybody. We should at least check it out.”

“Fine,” says John. “But just you and me. We don’t tell anyone else about it.”

Daniel’s face says that he knows exactly what John’s remembering, but he just nods.

The next day, Daniel says, “This is classified,” to Kiehl and Jacobsen, with a look on his face that suggests he knows _exactly_ how stupid that sounds. “No one else finds out we’re using your intelligence on missions.”

Which, _ow_ , but Kiehl and Jacobsen know how popular they aren’t, so they just say, “Yes, sir.”

 

“Allaire, Jordan, Rigby, and Masohar, you’re going with Colonel Sheppard,” says Daniel, spreading out the map of Boston that John stole for him out of a Ford Explorer’s glove compartment last time he went out.“Thorman, Asato, McConnell, Xu, you get to come with me.”

“What’s the plan?” asks McConnell, who’s on his first mission.

“Um, we kill things,” says Daniel. 

“That’s pretty much always the plan, so far,” John tells McConnell.

“I thought, Colonel Sheppard’s group here,” Daniel’s hands sketch a polygon around Kenmore Square," and we could try over here,” and his hands cross the Charles into Cambridge. “And we’d go from there.” 

“So, remind me again how we’re accomplishing anything,” says McConnell, who for some reason has chosen today to start speaking up.

John leans forward. “We are making the streets of Boston safe for children and the elderly. Although I’ve found that the mean ones with canes can pretty much get by on their own.” This is almost true, mainly because the Wraith don’t go for people who are _already_ old. It makes John want to start handing out semiautomatics to anyone over seventy.

“Right,” says Daniel after the long uncomfortable pause, and starts detailing transportation options. John rests his fingers on the pocket that has Daniel’s notes about the real plan, such as it is, and grins at McConnell.

 

In Boston, they wander the city and kill Wraith. It’s a ghost town. The only non-life-sucked person John sees is a guy who looks about a hundred and fifty, sitting in a Radio Shack and watching Never Been Kissed on DVD.

“Hi,” says John. “You okay?”

The guy grins at him. “Just fine.” He’s eating sour-cream-and-onion potato chips out of a huge bag.

John glances around. “You get power in here?”

“Batteries,” says the guy.

“Right,” says John. He looks around again. “So, do you have Resident Evil?”

The guy laughs a toothless laugh. “If I did, it’d be on.”

“Yeah,” says John, and leaves the guy to it.

They rendezvous, and John sends McConnell and Xu off to check out one area, and Asato and Thorman to check out a different one, and Daniel does the same, and then John pulls out the Boston map and they start walking.

 

It takes less than ten minutes to convince Dr. Granville that it would really be smarter to join them than to be killed by John’s P-90. He has a pretty nice collection, too. The little alien-looking ball doesn’t light up when John picks it up, but then, it doesn’t really look Ancient. A little too…golden.

Daniel takes it. “It’s Goa’uld.”

“What does it do?”

“I have no idea.”

Dr. Granville says, “I haven’t gotten to that one yet. But probably it’s a weapon.”

John grins.

 

After they bring Dr. Granville back to Vermont, Daniel looks at the little ball. His fingers trace gently over the hieroglyphics around the outside. “It says, ‘To protect my kingdom. To destroy my enemies. To exalt my name.’”

John looks down at the little bird pictures, and up at Daniel, and down at the bird pictures again. That, he thinks, will never stop being cool. Which is something he will also never say out loud. “So it’s a weapon.”

“It’s a weapon,” says Daniel. He turns the now-open little ball over in his fingers. “The trigger is here.” His finger doesn’t actually touch the square button. “It goes off about one minute after you trigger it.”

“About?” says John.

“Fifty-seven seconds. Alien minute.” Daniel touches something, and it snaps back into a little ball. He touches something else, and it’s open again. “It makes a big explosion.”

“Grenade,” says John. “Nice.” He doesn’t try to take it back.

Daniel’s looking down at it. His hands are stroking over the hieroglyphics, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

 

In the interests of self-preservation, John’s been spending some time watching Daniel Jackson when he’s up, down, confused, angry, preoccupied, and homicidal. He’s decided that a) there’s not much perceptible difference between moods one, two, and five, b) three happens more often than you’d think, if you’d spent less time around geniuses than John has, and c) mood number six doesn’t happen often—so far, John thinks, only when there have been Wraith in range—but when it does, _watch the fuck out_.

“Go away,” says Daniel.

“Can’t,” says John. “We have a super-secret meeting.”

There’s a pause, and then Daniel says, “Right,” and opens the door.

The floor of Daniel’s room is covered in sharp white shards. They crunch when John steps inside.

John looks for a long minute, then says, “Want to talk about it?”

“I dropped my coffee cup,” says Daniel.

“Okay,” says John, and they go on with the meeting.


	3. Chapter 3

At the next planning session, McConnell bites his tongue while Daniel’s fingers trace twisting paths through New York City, and John watches him until the meeting breaks up and everyone drifts out of the briefing room slash cafeteria.

He’s leaning against the wall outside when he hears, “Look, Dr. Jackson, I know you’ve spent a lot of time in the field, and you’ve served under some good Air Force people, but this is a war you’re trying to run, here. And Colonel Sheppard might have decided to turn a large part of the command over to you, but have you given any thought to letting an experienced military officer take your place?”

John translates. _Look, Dr. Jackson, you’re a pansy, Sheppard’s an idiot, and I get off on telling people what to do. Put me in command or I’ll take over when you aren’t looking._ Maybe he should have been paying a little more attention to McConnell.

Papers shuffle for a second, and then Daniel says, “Are you done?”

“That was all I had to say, yes.”

“Great. You’re going to Hartford, where you’ll go to this address—” papers rustling “—and get the crate of raw naquadah that should be in the sub-basement, and then to _this_ address, which you will blow to hell. Pick someone to go with you, visit Dr. Granville to get your explosives, and you leave at 0900 tomorrow.”

“I—” says McConnell, and stops. 

“I’d advise Xu, for this sort of mission,” says Daniel. “But I’m leaving it to your discretion.”

There’s a very long pause. “Yes, sir.” Another pause. “Finding Dr. Granville in Boston—was that part of some long-term strategy?” 

“What?” Daniel sounds distracted _already_ , and John makes a private bet with himself that he’s doing it on purpose. He also sounds like that’s the dumbest question anyone’s asked him since the invasion, but that isn’t anything new. “That’s classified, Major.”

“Right,” says McConnell softly, and a second later, he comes out the door.

“Have fun, Major,” says John, and grins as McConnell spins around.

“Uh—yes, sir,” he says, and makes his escape.

John wanders into the briefing room slash cafeteria. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” says Daniel. “What do you think?”

“That was good,” says John. “You almost sounded like we have a secret plan. And next time you stop a mutiny like that, can we get it on tape?”

Daniel heaves a sigh. “Good.”

John finds them some food, and sits down, and thinks that if McConnell took this long to figure out that Absent-Minded Professor Daniel is a mild-mannered alter ego for Utterly Single-Minded Daniel, then maybe McConnell will be spending a lot of time on solo missions from now on. “So. Plan time.”

Halfway through the—they like to call them command meetings, if only because it’s funny—the overhead light flickers, goes out. They’re out of fluorescent bulbs; it’s on their shopping list for New York. John gets a candle.

“So if we can find Granville’s buddy where he says he’ll be,” also known as _somewhere in Maryland_ , “—what?”

Daniel’s staring at the candle. “Just thinking about something.”

By now, John knows Daniel well enough to know when distracting him will take more effort than John’s willing to give. He waits.

After a second, Daniel looks up, and John says, “Any closer to enlightenment?”

That gets him a smile that’s sort of halfway there. “Depends on how you look at it,” says Daniel.

“Cryptic,” says John.

Daniel grins. “Oh, you don’t know cryptic.”

“Hey,” says John. “Veteran of the Pegasus galaxy, here. I’ve met some people. Mysterious people. Enigmatic, even.”

“I was remembering something,” says Daniel. He reaches out, plays with the candle flame. “If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago.”

“Okay,” says John after a second, “you win.”

 

John never spent much time at the SGC, but he does know what it looks like, and their little bunker under the Vermont hill is basically the same. Concrete tunnels, harsh lights. Steel doors. Bunker.

He dreams about long silvery hallways, colored lights and crystals, laptops interfaced with blinking displays, ocean stretching out blue in all directions. Transporters. The chairs that were never really comfortable, the weird alien food. The gateroom. Elizabeth serene and confident, Rodney deciding that John was the single stupidest vertebrate in two galaxies, Teyla kicking his ass and then drawing his forehead down to hers.

He’s been furious and frightened and disgusted and ashamed and halfway to murder, he spent months and months waiting, knowing they wouldn’t have enough firepower, hungry and exhausted and getting ready to die. He’s thought—so many times, he’s been ready to give it all up for Atlantis. So.

It just seems stupid to die here, after all of it.

 

They go to New York. They kill Wraith. John assigns himself to Daniel from the beginning, this time, and lets out some of his repressed anger. Daniel decides to pay attention today, and is as grim and ruthless as any of the military guys. They spend four hours wandering, and kill forty-seven Wraith between them.

The Trust official they were after hasn’t been home in a while, but her big store of cool stuff is still there. They pile it in their Jeep, and then they go back and kill more Wraith. John entertains fantasies of being a lieutenant again, of being the low man on the video game totem pole _on_ _purpose_ , of this being his real job. Maybe he’ll run away and become a traveling Wraith assassin.

“Isn’t this fun?” he says to Daniel in a break between Wraith sightings.

Daniel says, “Sure,” in the way that means you’re a crazy person, and John regrets saying it when he feels Daniel’s eyes on him for the rest of the mission.

Daniel rides next to him in the Jeep on the way back, and keeps watching him. John tries not to look like someone who wishes they could find a puddlejumper by the side of the road, so he could fly far, far away.

When they get back to Vermont, he helps John unpack, strips off his gear, and steps up to John in the locker room and says levelly, “If you leave me to do this by myself, I’ll find you and kill you. And I won’t come back.”

Leaving both John and the operation dead. John takes a careful breath and says, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Daniel says, but he steps back and lets John go take a shower.

 

They go to find the scientist who’s somewhere in Maryland. Another road trip. John drives along back roads, over flat ground when he can find it, around the highways full of accidents. Daniel’s a quiet presence next to him, buried in papers. John sneaks some looks; no hieroglyphics that he can see.

They drive through burned and blackened land, through a city center where people are spilling out the doors and no one cares about the Wraith because the neighbors are worse, through silent apocalyptic suburbia. John catches Daniel looking exactly once, glasses off and eyes fixed and staring, and doesn’t even try to think of something to say.

He breathes through his mouth instead and wonders what the land looks like at eight, ten, fifteen thousand feet.

They don’t find the scientist; probably he’s dead, but his area of Maryland is too close to D.C. for them to really figure it out. They make camp far, far away, where most of what they see is green.

Daniel puts his papers away, finally—hell if John knows what he’s doing with them, his job is the same as John’s and _John_ doesn’t spend that much time with papers—and drops down to the ground. There’s a fire, and eventually MREs for dinner, and then they lie on their backs and stare at the sky for a while.

“I’ll take first watch,” says Daniel after a while.

“Fine,” says John.

The stars are a lot brighter without city lights to drown them out. John’s been on worlds without any cities at all—and no air pollution, either—pretty regularly for the last couple of years, and he’s having a hard time remembering what the sky looked like when you really could count all the stars, if you wanted to.

“John,” says Daniel, low-voiced from two feet away.

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering. How long were you on Atlantis?”

Daniel’s read the reports, he has to know this—John spends a couple of seconds entertaining pod-person alien brain-takeover theories, and then goes with Occam’s Razor and decides that Daniel’s just being strange. “Two years.”

“Two years,” says Daniel. “When you were there…” he stops.

“Yeah?” says John again, after a minute.

“Nothing,” says Daniel. “It’s nothing.” He’s quiet until John falls asleep. In the morning, they start back toward Vermont.

 

John misses Atlantis like it’s a piece of him, and knowing that he’ll be dying here on Earth and never see the city again makes him gasp raggedly into his pillow at night, hyperventilating like Rodney on citrus. And beyond the long cool hallways, and the galaxy where only two hundred people even know what Lieutenant Colonel _means_ , and the sheer blank thrill of fighting two hundred against millions—gone, now, all gone now—is the deep uncomfortable knowledge that Daniel’s wanted Atlantis like _air_ since before John knew it existed.

 

They visit Cincinnati, looking for another scientist who may or may not be there. McConnell came back alive from his mission with Xu, and his impulses toward mutiny appear to have quieted down a little, so they leave him in charge and take Thorman and Clay.

This one’s home, and alive, and recognizes Daniel and lets them in. “Thank God,” she says. “I thought I was the only one. Where are you based?”

They talk to her, learn what she’s been working on, the people she used to know that she can’t find anymore, the projects she’s been doing her best to finish, the weapons she’s hoping to complete, if she can ever find the raw materials. “And maybe a team of engineers,” she says, and the little smile doesn’t hide the desperation underneath. “It’s a little hard to manage all by myself.”

Her name’s Dr. Regina Sim, and she’s tall and brunette and has quiet lines of pain around her mouth. She’s a little older than John and Daniel, but not much, and she’s giving them looks that say, it gets lonely here in Cincinnati with only the Wraith and the desperate refugees for company.

It takes Daniel another twenty minutes to notice; John can tell because he almost levitates out of his chair when he figures it out. He fidgets uncontrollably after that, and John thinks sadistically about taking Dr. Sim aside and telling her how hard it is for Daniel all alone in their fallout shelter, but instead he just asks her if she’ll show him what she’s been working on, while Daniel does a perimeter sweep and checks in with the home base.

He pretends to understand what she’s telling him about the science behind it all, and follows her around her lab, which is in her basement slash bunker, and eventually she turns to him and says, “You realize I can’t come back with you. The equipment would be impossible to transport without attracting the attention of the Wraith.”

And yeah, John thinks, looking around at the gleaming silver metal stuff, that’s true. “Okay,” he says. “So we’ll talk about corresponding. We’ll make it a long-distance relationship. And you can come visit at Thanksgiving.”

She laughs at that, and they talk practicalities for another few minutes, and then she looks at him across a potential death ray and asks if they’re staying the night.

“We have to get back,” says John.

 

So they’re building an operation, moving up a few levels, getting some extra lives. John almost starts feeling like they could make some progress.

Xu dies in Toronto, life-sucked. Daniel stands over the body for an eternal thirty seconds, while John waits a few feet away and isn’t sure whether he should be watching the street corners or Daniel. Eventually he decides that he’d rather die at the hands of a crazed Dr. Jackson—and why is it Xu who pushed him over the edge, rather than Powell or Davis or Ellsworth or any of the others? John has no idea—than a Wraith, so he turns his back and watches the corners.

For the rest of the day, Daniel twitches whenever he comes too close. John leaves him alone, lets him sleep on it, finds him in the cafeteria slash briefing room the next day.

“They’re arranging a funeral service,” he says.

“Good,” says Daniel. “Good for morale.”

“Everyone’s going to be saying something, I think,” says John.

“Good,” says Daniel again. “Release of feelings. Catharsis. It’ll be good for them.”

John has now reached the extent of his counseling skills, but he tries again anyway. “You could say something. If you wanted to.”

Daniel looks at him blankly. “I don’t think we ever even had a conversation.”

 

Despite evidence to the contrary, it’s sometimes hard to remember that Daniel is not the sane one. He projects well. He stands up in front of briefings and is authoritative and calm, he responds to stupidity with biting sarcasm, and John only ever catches things like broken coffee cups and drunken pronoun issues.

But then there’s a day when Daniel doesn’t show up to a briefing. John leans against a table, says, “Okay, guys, today we get to do this my way,” and pretends that Daniel’s off doing something too important for lowly mortals to handle while he briefs Saks, Singh, Thorman, and Hurley himself.

Afterward, he goes and knocks on Daniel’s door. He’s trying not to think about what happens if Daniel’s totally snapped.

“Go away, John,” comes from the other side of the door.

“Let me think about that,” says John. “No.”

He waits for a few minutes, and then he says, “Okay, I’m sitting down against your door. And I’m not moving until you let me in.” There’s no bathroom in there, and Daniel has to get hungry sometime. And—well, John’s pretty good at being annoying, and he learned a lot from working with Rodney McKay for two years. He’s confident.

As it turns out, it only takes three repetitions of _Still here!_ He even keeps himself from falling over backwards when Daniel opens the door.

Daniel waits while John gets up and comes inside. He doesn’t look good.

“Hi,” says John. “What’s up?”

Daniel laughs at that, short and sharp. “Oh, nothing. Just having a little bit of a nervous breakdown, that’s all.”

“Well, hey,” says John, “happens to the best of us.”

“Right.” Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose, makes a face like he has a migraine. “Want some coffee?”

John never really drank coffee before Atlantis. Sometimes he thinks that has to be symbolic of something. “Sounds great.”

John gets coffee in a cup that proclaims, “Archaeologists Don’t Dig Dinosaurs.” Daniel’s says something in hieroglyphics. John was not aware that Daniel had been snitching novelty coffee cups while they were out, but he figures, whatever helps.

Daniel stares into his coffee for a while, and eventually he says, “Did you know, I almost went to Atlantis with the _Daedalus_ , last year?”

Thinking about Daniel on Atlantis makes John uncomfortable for reasons he’s never really sat down and analyzed. “No, I didn’t.”

“We’d defeated the Goa’uld. It took us nine years.” Daniel sets his coffee cup down on the table, spins it slowly by the handle. “Understand that they ruled the galaxy unchecked for thousands of years, before we showed up. Nine years is,” he shakes his head. “It’s nothing. Teal’c had been fighting them his entire life. The Jaffa and the Tok’ra, for millennia. Millions and millions of people, enslaved for as long as they’d even been a species.”

John has no idea where this is going, but he drinks his coffee and traces the picture of the dinosaur on the cup and waits for it.

“What we did was miraculous. Maybe literally. Probably literally.” Daniel shakes his head, hard. “I don’t know. Point is, we did it, and it was done, and we were going our separate ways. And then,” his grin is quick and harsh, “the Ori showed up.”

And now John’s starting to get an idea of where this is going.

“So,” Daniel waves a hand, “forget retirement, forget research, time to save the galaxy again. Fine. We’d done it before. Except, _then_ ,” and now he laughs again, and it doesn’t sound good, “the next galaxy-destroying menace doesn’t even wait until we’ve gotten rid of the last one. And I have spent _ten years_ sacrificing my life and my work and my friends and my _family_ , and I had—some cold compensation in knowing that my skills, my experience, were going toward a valuable cause, and that I could use the work to which I had dedicated my _life_ to make the galaxy a better place.” He draws in a deep, shuddering breath. “But now here I am, in a fifties fallout shelter, drawing up mission plans and shooting at aliens, and the world is ending and everything I have ever worked for,” he opens a hand, “is useless.”

People should not be allowed, John thinks, people shouldn’t be allowed to say things like that.

Daniel bends his head, rubs his hands over his forehead. “I’m—propelled by inertia, lately. I can’t stop under my own power. I just—” he rubs his eyes. “I’ll be there tomorrow. 0900.”

“Good,” says John. It comes out kind of cracked.

Daniel looks up. “You can leave now.”

John leaves. He walks through the hallways, makes a few turns, goes into his own room, and shuts the door behind him. He drops down on his bed and finds himself staring at Daniel’s book of hieroglyphics.

Daniel cannot break. Daniel cannot break, because if Daniel deserts or shoots himself in the head or—whatever a snapped Daniel does—John is stuck here. And—and.

He breathes through the panic, keeps his hands down at his sides, stays leaning against the door. It was just a minor freak-out, just like the kind John has occasionally, had on Atlantis sometimes too, where he had to go to his quarters and sit down and shake because he’d just killed his C.O., or closed his eyes and waited for death that didn’t come, or almost turned into a fucking insect.

It happens.

 

One of the surreal things about life on post-Wraith Earth is that the chain of command is completely gone. The closest John has ever gotten to this kind of freedom was that first year on Atlantis, and even then, Elizabeth was the leader of the expedition, and the idea of an outside command was _there_ , out beyond ZPMs somewhere.

Here, he can do whatever the hell he wants. It’s like living in free-fall, and he’s not sure how he feels about it.

Except then there’s Daniel. Daniel, whose plans slot in next to John’s the way Elizabeth’s never did, who kills Wraith with the sort of detached ruthlessness that John would never say he recognizes, who has built himself some delicate web of sanity, and John’s right there to see it starting to fall apart, bit by bit.

He doesn’t know how to _do_ this. He doesn’t have anyone to fight against. There are only the endless, graceless, starving waves of dreadlocked alien menace, and Daniel. Daniel, who’s back there in his room with the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. Shredding himself into pieces, or something.

 

The next day, they go out and get lucky, find a ship that’s just landed, a bunch of Wraith grinning to each other, eating out. They almost— _almost_ —get the ship. Although how they’d hide it, or what they’d use it for, is beyond John, he’s pissed off enough to punch somebody when it lifts off and escapes.

So he hangs around and kills the rest of the stragglers, while McConnell takes the others and goes to get a stash of naquadah that’s supposedly in the area, and Daniel disappears to God knows where.

When John finds him, after he’s calmed down a little, Daniel’s sitting on the ground with his eyes closed, breathing. John spent enough time among wannabe Ancients to know meditation when he sees it. He wonders, again, how Ascension would work for someone who’s already done it once. _Could_ he do it again whenever the hell he wanted to? If so, John’s decided he’s feeling seriously cheated by the lack of an all-powerful being on their side.

Daniel’s eyes blink open when John’s shadow hits him, and he looks up at John, wordless.

“It goes both ways,” says John.

Daniel’s stare is clear, endless, fucking scary. “What does?”

“You can’t go off and leave me to do this by myself.” Wherever _off_ is. “Just—know that.”

 _I can’t hack this_ , he doesn’t say, and also _I don’t know if I can make myself care enough to do it alone._

“I know,” says Daniel.

 

Two nights later, John wakes up at one thirty-seven AM, covered in sweat and panting, holding his handgun like it’s the only thing keeping him from separating into his component parts.

He can remember the nightmare—nightmares—in bits and pieces; a Wraith sucking out his life, Atlantis blown up, standard nightmare fare that still leaves him seized up, freaking out. And other things—he saw Daniel’s face, Davis’s face, the Wraith-worshippers in the woods, but he’s shaking and he can’t calm himself down and he doesn’t quite remember which things are from the dream and which ones really happened.

He takes a walk. The corridors are people-free if you know where to go. It’s cool, and dim, and quiet, and he starts to calm down a little. He doesn’t put his gun away, though.

He means to pass Daniel’s door without knocking, even though he really, really wants to check and make sure Daniel hasn’t suicided during the night, but it opens as he’s walking by, and Daniel’s standing there, watching him. He’s wearing BDU pants, no shirt or socks, and he doesn’t look at all surprised.

“How did you know I was out here?” John asks after a second.

Daniel shrugs. “Do you want to come in?”

He almost asks why, but instead he just goes.

Inside, Daniel’s lit candles. “I was trying kel-no-reem,” he says. “Jaffa meditation.”

It’s John’s opinion that Daniel does not need more meditation, but he’s smart enough not to say anything about it. He plays with one of the candle flames, instead.

“So I’m guessing the gun isn’t meant for anything in particular?” Daniel asks.

John forgot he was holding it. “No,” he says.

“Okay,” says Daniel. “Want to play chess?”

And he gets out an honest-to-God chess set, stolen from some store somewhere, solid wooden board and carved black and white pieces.

“I’m not going to be very good right now,” says John.

“Well, I’ll win, then,” says Daniel.

Daniel wins. John plays with his left hand, which is steady enough to move the pieces without a problem, and keeps his gun in his other hand.

“Again?” Daniel asks after they finish.

“What is this, therapy?” John asks, not as accusatory as he’d intended to be.

Daniel shrugs. “Getting you drunk didn’t seem like a good idea.”

They play again.

John decides, halfway through the second game, that Daniel’s stare is just as intense when it’s fixed on chess pieces. He thinks about every move, and his hands are confident, sliding his pieces into place and picking up John’s with quick, smooth movements. John moves almost randomly, more absorbed in watching how Daniel decimates the board than in trying to win. By the time the game’s over, he can feel his muscles starting to unwind.

“You know, normally I’m more competitive than this,” he says.

Daniel glances up. “I know.”

They play again. This time, John works on setting up the board to create the coolest takedown sequence. Either it’s easier than he thought it’d be, or Daniel figures out what he’s doing and helps him out, because the pieces fall in patterns, until Daniel finally says, “Checkmate,” and starts gathering up the pieces and putting them back in their little felt-lined box.

John’s drowning in exhaustion, by now. The room’s hot from the candles, and the dream, whatever it was, has fallen back to the very edge of his consciousness. Daniel’s gotten up and is putting the chess set away, and when he comes back he’s golden in the candlelight, warm and solid, like John knows he isn’t. He reaches a hand down to John. “Come on.”

He takes Daniel’s hand. It’s warm. He pulls himself up, but Daniel’s pulling, too, and he comes up too fast, runs into Daniel and a sudden, heavily-muscled stop. It feels—

He hasn’t moved, and Daniel still has his hand. He’s off-balance, and Daniel’s mouth is hot under his.

It’s five seconds of tongue and stubble rasp and a deep drowning sensation, before Daniel jerks back.

“No,” says Daniel carefully, watching him like he isn’t sure John understands.

John breathes in. It’s still too hot. “No,” he says. “Yeah.”

Daniel relaxes. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” he says carefully.

“Don’t mention it,” says Daniel, and his face twitches a little, like there was a smile there but it didn’t quite make it to the surface.

“See you tomorrow,” John says, and escapes into the hall.

Once he’s there, he walks until he’s turned the corner, and then he leans back against the wall and stares at the ceiling for a few minutes.

It was a stupid thing to do. He knows better. He told himself, way back in Utah, that Daniel was off-limits, and he—he’s looked, but he knows how these things work, knows how this could screw this—whatever they have—up beyond fixing.

He still wants—

He can’t handle this right now. He’ll sleep for a couple of hours, and maybe when he wakes up…something else will be true.

 

The next day, John takes a Jeep by himself and drives until he sees Wraith. It takes three hours and a lot of concentrated effort to get anywhere, and at the end of it he spends a satisfying couple of hours ridding the greater Portland area of any Wraith he can find. He deliberately doesn’t think about how much this is going to piss Daniel off.

When he gets back, tired and sore and glad that he’s managed to waste pretty much the whole day, Daniel’s in Granville’s lab, bent over some of the Goa’uld stuff they got from Dr. Sim. He doesn’t look up when John comes in, but he does say, “How was risking your life for no reason? Did you have a good day?” The sarcasm is palpable.

“Great,” says John, and it comes out defensive, which is stupid. He leans in to look at the thing Daniel’s working on, a little palm-pilot-ish screen with hieroglyphics on it, and frowns. “Is that a jar with legs?”

“Yes,” says Daniel, short and clipped. “Don’t read over my shoulder.”

John’s reminded abruptly of Rodney, and takes a step back. “Sorry about today,” he says. “Sometimes you just have to get out.”

“Yeah,” says Daniel, “and if I thought that said anything about what you’re thinking or whether you’re going to do it again, I might accept your apology.”

John can’t think of anything to say to that, and eventually Daniel says, “Go away,” so he leaves.

 

He ends up waiting outside Daniel’s door that evening with some really good beer, because life is miserable when Daniel’s pissed. John is prone to tripping over Daniel’s sharp-edged sarcasm and coming to a dead stop, and it’s much, much worse when Daniel’s actually aiming.

When Daniel walks up, he’s reading from a folder, and he doesn’t notice John until his hand’s reaching for the door. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” says John. “I brought beer.”

Daniel blinks at him for a second, and then opens the door and holds it for John to follow him in.

Good. Great. Or something. John’s spent the last forty-five minutes trying to convince himself that an evening drinking beer with Daniel will be fun, but he hasn’t quite gotten himself there yet.

Sure enough, it’s tense and mildly hostile. John distracts himself by running through gun models in his head, but then he gets depressed at the thought that new ones probably aren’t going to be made for a while, and goes back to staring at Daniel while Daniel stares into his beer.

They both drink faster than they would normally, and halfway through his second beer, Daniel says abruptly, “You never really answered my question.”

John frowns. “What question?”

Daniel’s eyes flick down to his beer, and after a second they come up again. “How was risking your life for no reason?”

John can’t help the quick rush that comes up through him, vivid memory of earlier, crouching behind a building, pressed against warm concrete, ten Wraith just around the corner and no humans in sight. “I told you,” he says, and his voice is a little rough. “It was great.”

“Was it,” says Daniel, and now he’s watching John, intense.

“I killed fucking _crowds_ of them,” says John. “Streets are full of dead bodies up there.” And this is a stupid thing to say, but, “You should try it.”

Daniel’s still watching him, but he shakes his head, slowly. “No, thank you,” he says. “I don’t do suicide. After all,” a short laugh, “I couldn’t be sure it would _work_.”

This is too weird a concept for John to get his head around, even after only two beers. Like what Daniel’s saying has five or six or ten dimensions, and John’s brain is only working in three or four. Although n the plus side, it’s distracting him from the way Daniel’s mouth shapes itself around the bottle. “It’s not _suicide_ ,” he says instead of trying to respond to the other thing. “It’s just de-stressing. And as far as I can tell, I’m alive.” He snags another beer.

“Whatever,” says Daniel. “I’m not going to try to convince you. I wouldn’t want to see what would happen if I managed it.” He takes another one for himself. “But your day was great.”

“Yeah,” says John, and opens the bottle.

“Your day of fighting massive amounts of Wraith alone in the streets.”

“Yeah.” And now he’s thinking about it again, sliding through alleys and taking them out wherever he could, sprinting through the streets away from or after them—and that grenade, that was a work of _genius_ , he doesn’t even know how many he took out with that one—

Daniel’s got that same intent stare on him. John doesn’t shift in his seat, and doesn’t call attention to the arousal running through his body, but he thinks Daniel knows it’s there.

The silence stretches on and on and on, until John finally takes another drink of beer and says, “So. How was _your_ day?”

Daniel takes a breath, and then there’s a few seconds before he says, “I translated the inscriptions on some of the things Dr. Sim sent us,” and he keeps talking. John breathes carefully while Daniel’s voice winds through declensions and conjugations and multilateral hieroglyphs.

 

John wasn’t lying when he said his day was great. He half-wishes Daniel would loosen up enough to try something like it, but the other half is pretty sure that if Daniel ever gets that loose, he’ll be shooting at whoever comes close enough.

He almost wants to be there. He bets it’ll be interesting.

 

He falls into sleep, like straight off a cliff, and it’s a blank, blind jump from ten-thirty to three, when he’s suddenly awake and up and searching the room for—nothing.

He looks down at his gun, looks around the room again, and pulls on a holster over his T-shirt, puts the gun away.

3:17 AM. He’s not getting back to sleep.

The mess is farther away than it usually seems, now that there’s nothing between his feet and the freezing concrete floors. When he gets there, he almost runs into Thorman, who’s standing inside the doors with a sandwich on a plate.

“Oh—I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know,” she says. John’s putting together _didn’t know what?_ when she frowns and says, “Well, of course I didn’t know, you wouldn’t—uh, Dr. Jackson’s just over there, sir. I was just getting a sandwich, I didn’t see either of you.”

John takes longer than he really should to add _Daniel’s in the mess hall_ to _Thorman’s nervous_ and _it’s three in the morning_ and get _she thinks we’re having a secret meeting_. Right. “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” he says. “See you in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” says Thorman, and skedaddles.

Daniel is sitting with a mug and a stack of papers, and he doesn’t look like he’s moved in—ever, maybe. Like a statue, hands wrapped around his mug and eyes fixed on some point beyond the furthest manila folder.

It’s not like John didn’t know that Daniel doesn’t sleep. It gets creepy, though. He thinks he’ll relax about it the first time he gets up this late and doesn’t find Daniel already awake.

He makes noise, deliberately, as he walks over, but Daniel doesn’t twitch. John comes up behind him, puts his hands on Daniel’s shoulders. It’s a shock, finding him warm and real underneath John’s hands, like anyone else would be.

 

Two days later, John hasn’t slept in long enough that the world is taking on a sharp, bright crystal-quality, hard and too clear. His eyes are burning, and they’re out in the wilds of—somewhere—taking out a nest of Wraith who’d decided that their commute was too long.

And he knows he’s tired enough to start getting stupid, because he keeps getting distracted by Daniel.

Daniel kills like he’s pulling off a band-aid. John can almost see him thinking _let’s get this over with_. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s fucking _good_ at it, though, and John has to watch whenever he has a free second, because there’s something about Daniel taking a deep breath and steeling himself and going out to kill _twenty fucking Wraith at once_.

He doesn’t even care that Daniel gets more than he does, this time.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Daniel asks in the Jeep, frowning at him.

“So nice of you to be concerned,” says John, and starts it up. “I’m fine. Tired.”

John isn’t sure if he’s jealous of Daniel’s apparent ability to live without sleep. If it comes with the package of being Daniel Jackson, Daniel can keep it.

“Good day today,” he says. “I don’t even know how many we killed.”

“Yeah,” says Daniel, “go us. We’ve eradicated a percentage of the Wraith force probably prefixed with _nano_.”

“Hey,” says John. “I’d give that at least a milli.”

Daniel looks at him.

John sighs. “Yeah.”

 

They can’t keep nickel-and-diming this, and they both know it. It’s the reason they’ve got three scientists and a slowly-growing cache of tech in the lower levels of their fallout shelter. But they can’t—they _can not_ , and John knows this even when he kind of doesn’t know it at all—they can’t tip their hand. They can’t reveal their position, they can’t risk it all in a major operation, they can’t use too much of their equipment, because there are a zillion Wraith and not enough of them ( _two_ , John thinks, and forgets the other number half the time) and that math does not work.

Problem is, Daniel wanders through this war wanting any place but here, and John lies awake at night and breathes through the panic of _knowing_ , deep inside, that he’s never going to see Atlantis again.

 

They go home and shower and debrief and eat dinner, and John’s almost beginning to understand Daniel’s whole—futility thing, because he keeps thinking _nano_ , and _pointless_.

After dinner, he stays behind Daniel, ends up in his room, kicks back on the floor. Daniel gives him an expressive look— _I am on to you and whatever it is you’re doing, but I will let you stay on my floor anyway_ , which is a nice trick, since _John_ doesn’t even know what he’s doing—and lays out two decks of cards for spider solitaire.

John watches until the cards blur. When he lets his eyes close, he holds onto the picture, and he zones out to the sound of cards whispering and snapping down against each other.

When he opens his eyes, it’s after one and Daniel’s drinking tea, watching him. His head feels clear and too-awake, tired haze swept away. He says the first thing that comes into his head, which is, “You didn’t have to do that.”

Daniel frowns. “What?”

“Today,” he points at Daniel, “you killed the mood.”

Daniel raises an eyebrow. “I killed the mood.”

“Yes.” 

“Well,” Daniel’s humoring the crazy man, “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” Daniel rubs his forehead. “Maybe you could tell me what I’m not sorry for.”

“Nano?” says John. “ _Nano_?” He got enough sleep to realize he should be angry about this. He definitely didn’t get enough to realize he shouldn’t be, which he’s glad about around the edges.

“Oh,” says Daniel. “I don’t get it.”

“For God’s sake,” says John, “we kicked ass. That’s good. You understand _good_?” Like it’s a foreign word, which for Daniel it might be, for all John knows. Maybe if he picked a different language, the concept might make it through to Daniel’s brain.

“Of course I do, but I don’t see what’s wrong with a little realism—”

“So when’s the last time _you_ were in a good mood, then,” says John, because okay, maybe he’s not the happiest guy in the universe, but he at least knows how to enjoy good moments when they come. But _Daniel_ —

“How is that relevant to _anything_?” says Daniel.

Sometimes Daniel makes John wants to bang his head against the wall. Or bang Daniel’s head, maybe. “Forget it,” he says.

 

But he’s still kind of pissed off—not that there’s any real reason to be pissed at Daniel for being Daniel, but hey, anger and logic are not best friends—so when Easton and Rigby come back at one AM with possibly reliable intel about a weapons stash, he drags Daniel out of bed to go check it out. John leaves McConnell a note tacked to the door in the garage. Daniel’s curled protectively around a travel mug of coffee.

John likes driving at night, and the Wraith mostly left the gigantic New England forests alone, so he can almost pretend that he’s alone on the two-lane highway because it’s one-thirty in southern Vermont, not because of the devastating alien scourge.

“How’s the coffee, Daniel?” he asks, about ten minutes into the drive.

Daniel mutters something that John figures doesn’t need a translation.

He starts waking up around the Massachusetts border. “So what’s this—intelligence,” he asks, and if he was a lawyer, he’d have said _alleged_ in there somewhere.

“Possible explosives in Hubbardston, Mass,” says John. “Also possible Wraith in the area. We’re seeing if we can get to the explosives before they do.”

“Hubbardston?” says Daniel.

“Just south of Gardner,” says John. “I have a map.”

Daniel squeezes his eyes shut for a second, shakes his head a little, and tries for awake again. “Gardner?”

“We drove through it last time,” says John. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember. It’s the furniture capital of New England, after all.”

“The size and population of this country, plus modern communication technologies, leads small American towns to try and differentiate themselves in any way they can,” says Daniel. “Up to and including chair manufacturing.” He yawns.

John grins and doesn’t say, _Not anymore._ “Breakfast?”

“Um,” says Daniel.

John tosses him a Powerbar anyway.

 

They hit Wraith before they get there, driving through one of the countless tiny little towns. John crouches behind a building with Daniel and plays guerilla, sneaking around the little down and shooting from behind walls, inside buildings, rooftops. Their stunner blasts are slower than bullets, easier to avoid, and they don’t take out the property around him, but it takes a lot of shots to bring them down; any time he kills one, he’s been in one place long enough to give his position away. John compensates by picking up the pace, shooting faster, running faster.

Daniel’s a foot behind him the whole way, over the fire department, through the park, across to the library, shooting right along with. They kill them and kill them and kill them, until John’s vision is blurry and his ears are ringing and Wraith corpses are covering the streets.

After they’re finished, John stands in one place and pants for a few minutes, then says, “Okay, so you can’t say we didn’t kick ass, right there.”

“Fine,” says Daniel, “we kicked ass,” and he’s not smiling but he’s not frowning either, just watching John with the specialty Daniel stare that makes him feel like he’s being stripped and examined by inquiring eyes.

 

They finally reach the _seriously_ tiny town of Hubbardston, and come up with a bunch of C-4 hidden in the basement of the address they were given. A ton of dead Wraith plus a ton of captured explosives equals a successful trip as far as John’s concerned, and he’s in a definite good mood when they make camp a ways outside of town.

Daniel’s still watching him, here and there, eyes flicking up, fixing on John, and flicking back down again. It’s uncomfortable, but John’s in too good of a mood to let it bother him. 

He gets his pack out of the Jeep, sets up his bedroll. When he pulls off his shirt to replace it with one sans Wraith juice, Daniel’s eyes trace his bare chest.

The reason John has always avoided sex with people at work is because no matter how good it is, it ends up messy and uncomfortable and it never turns out well for anyone. But work is gone, and now this is the only thing they have. And he knows what Daniel feels like pressed up against him, and he can guess what Daniel’s thinking. Neither of them has mentioned kissing late at night in Daniel’s room, but John hasn’t forgotten, and there are moments when the memory trickles up to the surface and takes over.

But Daniel clears his throat and says, “So, for dinner—MREs, or MREs, or maybe MREs?” with a brisk nothing-to-see-here tone in his voice, so John sits back and—fails to forget about it.


	4. Chapter 4

When they get back, McConnell bitches them out for scaring him to death.

“—understand that you have intelligence I don’t, and that you’re doing important things, but Colonel, Dr. Jackson, please consider that it might not be the best idea for the two ranking—” he stumbles, “people—to risk their lives at the same time. For the mission’s sake.”

John doesn’t fall on the floor laughing, but it’s a close call. He _does_ feel like he’s fourteen years old and he’s stayed out past curfew.

Daniel takes it for about five minutes before he says, “Excuse me, Major,” and beats it.

 

John changes his clothes, showers, and gets some food. He takes a nap, hits the gym, showers again, sits down and talks with a couple of the airmen about nothing in particular. Around 1200, he says, “Screw it,” and goes to find Daniel.

 

“What—” says Daniel, and that’s as far as he gets before John steps up and kisses him.

If he had spent any time thinking about this, he would have thought that Daniel would say no again. But Daniel’s making a desperate, low-pitched noise, and his mouth is hot and open under John’s. There was one flinch, a quick _I-don’t-think-we-should_ twitch, but then his hands clutched at John’s shoulders, slid around his neck. And now John’s panting against Daniel’s mouth, pressed against him, kissing and kissing. When John takes a step forward and pushes Daniel back against the wall of his room, Daniel makes another noise, almost a whine, and John grins and slides down his body to the floor.

Daniel’s hands come up into his hair, and John works his zipper down and gets his cock out, and he doesn’t even know the last time he did this, but he remembers how. Daniels’s fingers clench when he tongues the head, and he lets them push him down.

And then it’s all cocksucking, wet sounds and full mouth and jaw aching slightly. Daniel’s losing it above him, just like Daniel never does, and that’s something to think about, later. John’s hard enough that he’s gasping around Daniel’s cock, and each little thrust against the back of his throat is a jolt.

When Daniel comes in his mouth, John’s brain whites out, and when he comes back, he’s sprawled on the floor on his back with the taste thick in his mouth and Daniel’s hands running over him. He’s coming almost before one of them slides between his legs.

As they’re getting themselves back together, Daniel hands John a handful of tissues. By the time he’s cleaned himself up and thrown them away. Daniel’s sitting in his chair, elbow on the desk, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. His eyes are closed. John lets himself out.

 

So now he’s—well, he’d almost forgotten what sex even _felt_ like, and now he’s going through the day—briefing room, labs, quarters, briefing room, gym, labs—and he’s almost worried that someone’s going to notice, because his entire body feels open and waiting and there’s moments when he can hardly even breathe.

He jerks off in the bathroom after lunch, hand on his cock and remembering hard floor under his knees, full mouth and blank mind and Daniel being _loud_ —and who would have thought? His thumb slides over the head of his cock as he remembers Daniel’s low-voiced _fuck_ , and he comes into his hand, gasping.

Sex. _Sex._ He hasn’t felt this good in months. For most of the day, he can’t even remember what it’s been like, crushing fear and endless, pointless fighting. Brain chemistry, he thinks, is a beautiful thing.

 

He comes to Daniel’s room that night, and standing outside, he thinks, for a serious thirty seconds, that Daniel isn’t going to let him in. John’s barely seen him all day, which is probably intentional on Daniel’s part considering the size of their fallout shelter, and John’s knowledge of the inner workings of Daniel’s mind does not extend to figuring out whether he’ll be up for round two.

But the door opens, and John steps inside. There are candles, again, and Daniel’s barefoot and graceful when he closes the door behind John and runs a finger over the back of his neck.

“Hi,” John manages, and Daniel smiles.

John’s pushed back toward the bed a slow step at a time, Daniel’s hand pressing against his chest. It’s careful and deliberate and very clear, but even if he wanted to say no, John doesn’t think he could make himself open his mouth. Daniel’s eyes are fixed on him, and neither of them says anything until John’s sprawled on his back with Daniel over him.

“It’s a stupid idea,” says Daniel casually, pushing up John’s T-shirt. John arches before he realizes what he’s doing.

“It’s a stupid idea, and I shouldn’t have let it happen earlier, and I spent a long time thinking about it this evening. You were going to show up, and I was going to tell you to get out, and that would have been it. Raise your arms.” Daniel pulls the T-shirt off of him; it’s loud against his ears.

“But,” says Daniel, and runs a hand down John’s chest, “I’m sick of this. My selflessness isn’t endless, no matter what people think.” He backs up, starts pulling off John’s boots.

John takes the pause while Daniel undoes his shoelaces and thinks—he can think, sort-of—about what’s happening here. This slow, inexorable monologue (he doesn’t know _where_ his brain was, thinking that sex with Daniel would be like sex with a normal person), and he knows where it’s going and he knows how much say he’s going to have in this. He should probably make a conscious decision about it, but that doesn’t seem important, right now. When Daniel pulls his sock off, he can feel the thumb against his instep all the way up his body.

“I need something to hold on to, and something to let go with. This can be both.” Daniel undoes his pants and hooks his fingers into the waistbands of the pants and the boxers underneath, and his fingernails dig into the skin of John’s thighs, sliding all the way down. “And you,” Daniel glances up at John’s face, “you’re fucking crazy. Which works, I think.”

And he bends down, and his tongue is tracing hot-cold patterns across John’s chest, and John gives up on his brain for the night and strains up against him, as Daniel works his way downward and takes John’s cock in his mouth.

The idea that Daniel is good at cocksucking is almost as hot as the actual blowjob, and John’s been riding the edge all day, so he almost bites through his lip keeping himself from going right over. He can’t keep from thrusting, a little, but Daniel takes it without flinching, and John lets his eyes fall shut while Daniel sucks him. He’s been waiting for this—every time he thought about earlier or slid a hand over his body or fucking brushed up against someone in the _hallway_ , he wanted this. “Jesus _Christ_ ,” he hears himself, no control at all, and it’s so fucking good. 

When he comes, he can’t keep still and he can’t keep quiet and Daniel has to hold his hips down, so hard that he can still feel the fingers after Daniel’s let go. And after that, he’s boneless, no way to even _try_ to figure out what he’s feeling when Daniel slides a slick finger in, and a second, and a third, watching him so intently all the time. John just catches his breath and keeps his legs apart and watches Daniel’s careful, controlled movements. It takes a while, but when he starts feeling it again, Daniel catches on instantly, and chases after each twitch of pleasure until John’s starting to pant again.

John hasn’t done this in a long, long time. He likes it too much, and he knows it, and it’s dangerous to risk someone else finding that out. But _now_ , the world’s ended, and there’s no military to screw him for getting screwed, no CO who doesn’t want a pansy in his unit, and no one’s watching but Daniel.

Daniel’s fingers are moving gently around John’s cock, and he keeps just-barely brushing John’s prostate with his other hand. And then John looks past what Daniel’s doing and realizes he’s still _wearing all his clothes_ , and John has to close his eyes and swallow down the groan, even while he’s arching up into Daniel’s hand.

“Good,” Daniel breathes, and slowly pulls his fingers out. He wipes off his fingers and strips, leaving the clothes where they fall. He angles John’s hips up toward him, hands big and warm. John closes his eyes and waits for it. 

When Daniel pushes in, the reflexes are still there; it’s easier than it should be and it barely even hurts, and he _doesn’t_ want it to hurt more, because that would just be fucked-up—“ _Jesus_.”

“Good,” says Daniel again, and John can hear the smile in the word. Daniel thrusts in again, hard and _good_. John’s slick with sweat, all he can smell is sex, and he doesn’t want to open his eyes, doesn’t want to know what this looks like, but there’s no _way_ he can help himself, and his mouth is open and panting when he finally looks Daniel in the eye.

“You want this,” says Daniel, low and certain, his hand wrapping around John’s cock.

“Fuck you,” John manages, not that anyone could have concluded _anything_ different—he drags in air, but he’s not going to be able to say anything else. He can’t remember why he ever thought this was a bad idea. And then Daniel hits just the right spot, and he can barely remember his _name_ ; his head’s back, he can’t breathe, it’s too fucking much. Lights behind his eyes; ringing in his ears; he comes blind and senseless and doesn’t even know if he’s making noise.

It takes him a minute to come down from it. When he can see again, Daniel’s breathing harshly, watching John like he couldn’t look away if he tried. He swallows hard, slides a hand through the come on John’s stomach, and thrusts in deep, and John can feel him coming. He shudders, and Daniel drops down onto him, hot and sweat-slick.

John just breathes, tastes some of the sweat on Daniel’s shoulder, comes down from the high.

 

John sleeps like a rock, but he wakes up at five and Daniel’s still asleep. He takes a second to be surprised at that—but, well, theoretically, Daniel has to sleep sometime. 

He slips out, congratulates himself on avoiding a morning after, and they go about their business.

 

Daniel corners him in the cafeteria-slash-briefing-room later that day. John has an instant of creeping horror at the idea that Daniel’s going to say something about last night. He wastes a second looking for escape routes, but just when he’s about to give up and take it like a man, Daniel says, “You flew a Wraith dart once, didn’t you.”

John blinks. “Yeah.”

“Can you teach anyone else to do it?”

“Well—sure. Yeah. I guess.”

Daniel nods. “Good.”

And then he’s gone. John wonders, just for a minute, if he maybe hallucinated last night happening, but decides that a) he should have expected this [i.e., the unexpected] from Daniel, post-sex, and b) it would take someone a lot crazier than he is to hallucinate something like that.

 

Daniel spends the rest of the day running around like a man possessed. John spends some time considering that Daniel might _be_ possessed, but eventually figures, not likely.

John spends most of the day failing to not think about the sex.

Blowjobs, he thinks, were okay. Whatever. Nothing more than he’s done around other bases, with other guys. But the fucking—

That’s as far as he gets. (A lot of times. But who’s counting.) He’s good at distracting himself from things like this. Thinking about them too much never does any good, anyway.

 

Daniel catches him again around eighteen hundred, brandishing a laptop and seven thousand sheets of paper. Some of them have diagrams on them. “My room,” he says as he’s walking up, and goes straight past John, en route. John rolls his eyes but follows.

John drops down on the floor and helps Daniel spread the papers out around burned-out candle stubs, and listens and points things out and carefully doesn’t think about what this might mean, and says, “You realize you’re _insane_ , right?” twelve or fifteen times. And when they’re done, he sits back on his heels and says, “Fuck me. We actually have a secret plan.”

“Remember before you get excited, we’re probably all going to die,” says Daniel.

“So what else is new,” says John, and leans in.

Daniel’s head tips back and he doesn’t make a sound while John sucks him, just closes his eyes and buries his hands in John’s hair. John swallows thickly and lets Atlantis, silver and gleaming, slip down past the back of his mind.

 

The next morning, Daniel does the briefing. “Group A will be going for the hangar,” he says, and now he’s watching John. “Group B will be causing mayhem over in the city.” He arches an eyebrow at John. “You want the mayhem?”

He does. And Daniel will probably have fun securing the hangar. “Aw, for me?” he drawls, and Daniel smiles a little, like he’s satisfied.

They set out. Daniel drives one of the Jeeps, John drives the other, and they split up before they reach the actual city. John and his group go in first, and Daniel’s group moves off to the private airfield that’s the object of this mission, a decent distance from the city.

“So let’s do this,” says John, and they commence with the killing of Wraith. He’s pretty much never going to get tired of blowing their dreadlocked heads off. Especially if he gets to use grenades—sometimes he wishes they’d just _die_ after a machine gun burst.

Sometimes, it’s fun. Whenever he’s using a handgun, he’ll play let’s-see-how-many-shots. Anything over fifteen, and he starts respecting the hell out of the fucker while he reloads.

 

“Did you do it?” he asks Daniel, when they meet up.

Daniel’s fingers are warm and brief on the back of his neck, and he has to fight not to tilt his head back. No one else sees.

“We did it,” says Daniel.

John takes a deep breath, forgets about the touching, and grins. “We’re in business.”

 

So now John’s pretty much resigned himself to the fact of dying on Earth.

Okay. Whatever.

 

John learned, about five minutes after they met, that Daniel Jackson could focus like a motherfucker. Mostly, he sees it from the outside—just _try_ getting Daniel to listen to you when he’s thinking about something else. Ninety percent of the time, he doesn’t even notice enough to get pissed off. Like he’s somewhere else, or you are.

But once in a while, _John’s_ the focus. A minute or two, pinned in place while Daniel looks at him, and considers.

John pretty much hates it.

Since there’s nothing he can do about Daniel being Daniel, and since it’s only a minute here and there, he just deals. But now they’re fucking, and—

It’s odd moments. John on his back, legs open and waiting, and Daniel stops for a second, and just watches. In the mess hall, frowning at today’s new and weird attempts at balanced meals—and catching Daniel, coffee going cold in his hand, staring. John at Daniel’s door, just standing in the hallway for a long minute, while Daniel looks at him or through him or into him, and John’s wondering wildly, _what the hell is he thinking_ , until he breaks and has to say, pointedly, “Can I come in?”

John hates it a _lot_.

 

It turns out that, when they’re actually out to do it, capturing a Wraith dart isn’t that hard. Half the Wraith that show up Earthside don’t think twice about leaving the keys in the car, and when it comes down to it, the hardest part is John remembering how to fly it.

If he had to summarize piloting a dart in one word, it’d be one of the ones without any real consonants, like _eaugh_. It always feels slimy inside the cockpit, and he has do it more on instinct than anything, so he has to be _paying attention_ with his whole body. He always walks around feeling damp and uncomfortable for a couple hours afterward. 

Daniel finds the dart fascinating; he crawls all around the thing, trying to decode it or understand it or whatever the hell it is he wants, and then comes back to base and showers for an hour, which they can’t really afford. John goes and finds him, the third time it happens, and catches him still in a towel, water slicking his hair down. He looks—blanker than usual.

John recognizes that look, he’s seen it on other people, and he knows how to do this.

It isn’t hard. He has his mouth on Daniel’s before either of them says anything, and then it’s just kissing, which John has always been good at. He doesn’t go for tongue right off, just holds Daniel’s face in his hands and kisses him, long and shallow and easy, until John can feel his muscles unwinding, just a little, until he falls a step back under John’s hands. He kisses Daniel’s mouth open—he tastes like toothpaste and Altoids—tilts Daniel’s head back, pushes Daniel back against the wall.

And _whoops,_ says his brain, _that won’t work_ —but Daniel goes. Head back, mouth open, back to the wall. Jesus _Christ_ , it’s hot.

And oh _God_ , it was stupid to start fucking _Daniel fucking Jackson_. John drags in a lungful of air, digs his fingers into Daniel’s bare back, and holds on.

 

They get into a rhythm. Hit a city. One group goes to wreak havoc, kill Wraith, blow up buildings, whatever. The other group finds out where the Wraith have parked their darts, and takes one. John always gets to be in group two, which is both good—he gets to fly!—and bad—he’s flying a _dart_ —but no one else can fly the things, so.

It’s a simple plan, but really, _military discipline_ is no longer in the Wraith vocabulary. They don’t need it for anything. They’re living in an all-you-can-eat special. As far as either John or Daniel has been able to see, since the military installations and the major centers of government were destroyed, the Wraith haven’t displayed any organization beyond _hey, buddy, wanna go grab some lunch?_

It works. And, against all logic, it keeps working.

John has to wonder why something hasn’t gone horribly wrong. If they’d tried this sort of thing in Pegasus, they would have been royally screwed around Dart #3.

 

They designate Dart 1 as Training Dart, and John spends a lot of hours teaching people to fly it. He’s tense at first, worrying about the Wraith noticing, but these days, darts are buzzing around Earth like a lot of evil mosquitoes, and no one cares about one more, even if it mostly looks like its pilot tried life-sucking someone with greater than .10 blood alcohol content.

Daniel spends a lot of time in the lab with Dr. Granville, in electronic communication with Dr. Sim, and scouting around for intelligence on more explosives and/or people who know how to make them. John is vaguely irritated at having to spend days on end teaching something he could be better at himself, when he’s always sucked at teaching, anyway. He spends some energy wishing that Daniel could help—Daniel’s had more teaching experience than John has, and he’d make little cutting comments when the students were out of earshot—until he realizes that he’s _missing Daniel_.

He concentrates on teaching after that, to avoid thinking about how he’s sort of disgusted with himself.

 

Except then Rasmussen, who’s been having a really hard time getting the hang of this fly-a-dart thing, comes in too steep and fast for a landing, and crashes.

John skids to a stop next to Training Dart and works on prying the thing open; after a second, Li and Thomsen pound up next to him and help. It’s long, agonizing minutes before they get inside, working in silence.

Rasmussen’s head is split open. They get his body out of the cockpit and bring it back to base. Neither John nor Daniel says anything at the memorial.

When John comes to Daniel’s room that night, Daniel’s sprawled back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t look at John.

John is not in the mood to decode one of Daniel’s labyrinthine freakouts right now, but he sort of wants some life-affirming sex, to counter the flat blankness that was today. So he goes over and sits down on the bed and waits.

“Somewhere,” says Daniel eventually, “somewhere, in the last few years, I lost something.” He rubs his eyes, then apparently decides that isn’t enough, and presses in with the heels of his hands. “Once upon a time, I cared about individual lives— _any_ individual innocent life—more than I cared about the greater military goal. Even if—even if the goal would save _more_ lives, even if I understood exactly why military action needed to be taken, even if I _agreed_ with it, if I knew lives would be sacrificed—if I knew _a_ life would be sacrificed.” He takes a shuddering breath. “Even if it was the right thing to do. I cared more. It _affected_ me more than the greater principle at stake.” His eyes blink open, and he stares up at the ceiling. “That isn’t true anymore. I lost it somewhere, along the way. And I doubt I’ll ever get it back.”

John’s pretty sure this is because of how Daniel took the news about Rasmussen—a surprised “Oh,” and a frown, and John could see him thinking about how this cost them a pilot _and_ a dart, and set the plan back farther than he would have liked.

Daniel rubs his forehead. “You know, I can’t remember what he looked like?”

“Dark hair,” says John. “Kind of short.”

Daniel looks at him. “You really aren’t helping at all.”

“Want a blowjob?” John offers.

Daniel laughs, but it sounds like it’s tearing at his chest. “Yes,” he says, “thank you,” and he’s still laughing like that when John slides down to his knees and undoes his pants. He quiets down when John starts sucking, and fucks John’s throat hard—John’s going to be feeling that, and he’s not complaining—but when John stands up, still swallowing, there’s a wet trail tracing along Daniel’s temple into his hair.

 

Daniel’s days of work pay off; he’s got the location of a store of nukes.

“One catch,” he says. “They’re in Arizona. But I don’t want to waste a week driving.”

“No problem,” says John. “We’ll take a dart.”

There’s a second’s pause before Daniel answers—John has no idea if he’s read the reports about what can happen to people when they’re the special Wraith version of passengers—but the answer’s a yes.

Other people are not so happy.

“Look, sirs,” says McConnell, “I realize that we’re going to have to test the efficiency of the darts’ dematerializing beams sometime, but maybe you shouldn’t start the experiments with Dr. Jackson. We kind of need him.”

“I’m really not doing anything too specialized, lately, Major,” says Daniel. “Administrative things, mostly. I think you’d survive without me. Anyway, it’s safe. The Atlantis team did it and survived.”

McConnell isn’t happy about it, and most of the others aren’t, either—“which is one of the reasons we should do it this way,” says Daniel to John, “because they have to see that I’ll be fine.” “As fine as you ever are,” mutters John—but they take their orders and come out to watch when John and Daniel leave.

 

They get to Arizona and find a _jackpot_.

“Should I be disturbed that you’re this turned on by a bunch of nuclear explosives?” Daniel says, but he runs his tongue along John’s collarbone before John can answer, thus pretty much assuring his question’s going to stay rhetorical, because John is riding the high of maybe actually being able to _pull this off_.

 

John’s not asleep when the proximity alarm goes off. In fact, he’s in the room _with_ it, having figured after lying awake for a couple of hours that if he’s not going to be sleeping anyway, he might as well let the duty guy get some sleep and take over himself.

It still takes him a minute to react. He isn’t used to _having_ alarms. Before this, it’s always been either _the Wraith haven’t found us and we’re fine_ , or _the Wraith have found us, and we’re fucked._

But someone’s tripped the early-warning sensors around their hangar, and they have to get the fuck over there _now_ , or forget their secret plan. John bolts out of the control room and hits Daniel’s room at a run. It’s not locked, and John takes a second to be surprised about that.

Inside, Daniel’s asleep. “Daniel,” says John, sharply. “ _Daniel_. Wake up.”

Daniel shifts, shoves at his blankets. John finally shakes his shoulder, and that gets him a hand batting at him and a slurred, “Jack?”

“No. Daniel. It’s John. _Wake up_.”

That finally gets through, and Daniel sits up, squinty-eyed. “What’s up?”

“Someone’s in the hangar,” says John, and Daniel’s past him almost before he realizes.

 

Halle- _fucking_ -lujah, it isn’t a Wraith. More hallelujah, it isn’t fifty Wraith. John has never fully grasped how their telepathy thing works, and he does _not_ want to have to scrap this operation.

What it _is_ , though, is—unexpected.

John really shouldn’t be surprised that there are ten members of the armed services left outside their base who can work as a group, but he is, somehow. They’ve been living in a bubble of non-communication, ever since Arkansas. Outside of a couple of scientists and a couple hundred thousand Wraith, they couldn’t find anyone to communicate _with_.

Well, now they have, and they’re guarding the entrance to Daniel and John’s very own hangar. John’s ready to step forward, but Daniel gets there first.

“Hello,” he says, and suddenly there are a bunch of automatic weapons pointed at them. “Wait,” he says quickly, and holds out his own gun, bending to put it on the floor. “These ships are ours.”

There’s a pause while the other guys digest this. John counts exactly ten, wearing fatigues, looking like soldiers. U.S. soldiers, even. Finally, one of them speaks up. “These are _your_ Wraith darts?”

“They are.” Daniel looks confident. His voice is resolute. _Of course they are; whose else would they be?_

The leader’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. “Well, can I ask how you _got_ them, then?”

Daniel’s sarcasm steamrollers over the other guy’s. John resists the urge to start keeping score. “We _stole_ them.” The _duh_ is hanging in the air. 

“Oh, yeah?” says the guy. “You sure you aren’t one of those Wraith-worshipping cults? You sure you didn’t sell out to them to keep from being eaten? You sure you didn’t just find this hangar and now you want to keep the ships for yourselves?”

Daniel takes a visible deep breath. John can practically see the struggle not to dry-voice the guy to death, and the next words come out civil. “Look, we’re all on the same side here. We were members of the Stargate program; this is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and I’m Dr. Daniel Jackson. We’re fighting the Wraith.”

This, finally, makes the guy pause. “You’re Daniel Jackson?”

“Yeah,” says John, stepping in to press the advantage while it’s there, “he is. You’re welcome to start explaining who _you_ are any second now.”

“Captain Timothy Granger, USAF.” The captain glances around at his men. “Any of you recognize him?” Headshakes. He calls out, “Pinhoe, Larsen! Get out here!”

Two men come running out of the hangar. Granger says, “You two worked at Cheyenne Mountain, am I right?” Quick _yes, sir_ s. “Who is this man?” He points.

“Sir,” says one of them, “sir—that’s Daniel Jackson.”

The captain looks at the other one, who nods. “It’s Dr. Jackson, sir. Unless it’s a clone or something.”

“You’re from the Stargate program, too,” says Daniel, and blinks. His eyes are a little wild when they meet John’s—the mountain, and then Area 51, and then Arkansas, and _then_ week after week of becoming more convinced that they were the only organized military group left in the country—John sympathizes, and takes a couple of slow, deep breaths. It could be real, it could not be real, they’ll deal with it whatever it is. 

Daniel rallies a little, and says, “How did you find this place?”

“We’d heard reports of anti-Wraith activity around the Northeast. We were patrolling this area and we noticed the dart activity. It wasn’t hard,” Granger says absently. He’s frowning. “I’m not authorized to bring anyone to meet my superiors, but if Pinhoe and Larsen are vouching for you, I’ll believe them and we can talk. How big is your operation, here?”

“I don’t think we’re telling you anything until you prove who _you_ are,” says John. Because, appearances aside, they’ve been down this road before, and it does not end well.

But he’s reeling. They have reports. Patrols. God knows what else they could have.

Granger doesn’t get angry, just says, “Fair enough. I have to report this. We can send some people back here—say, a week from today. There’ll be someone with more authority than I have, Dr. Jackson, and we’ll proceed from there.”

“Great,” says Daniel, sounding dazed.

And then the captain cracks a smile. “It’s good to hear you’re alive, Dr. Jackson. The scientists are going to be impossible—they swore you couldn’t be dead. Said you couldn’t break that long of a winning streak.”

The scientists. John can hear Daniel’s quick indrawn breath, soft and isolated in the sudden whirling of his brain. “Scientists?” Daniel asks.

“The guys we got out of Area 51,” says Granger.

“But,” says Daniel, airless, “but Area 51 was destroyed. It’s a crater.”

“No, sir,” he says. “The _surface_ is a crater. I understand that some of the people down there rigged a shield at the last minute, made from some of the technology they had available, and kept the lower levels safe from the blast. The top area, yeah, that’s a crater. It fooled the Wraith just fine.”

John’s fists are clenching—he can’t, it can’t be this easy—this happened _before_ —

Daniel steps forward, intense and forceful, “Do you know who—”

“Colonel Carter’s alive, Dr. Jackson,” says the captain. “She and Dr. McKay are heading the science division right now.”

 _Rodney_. John needs to not think about this right now, because—because he’s not going to be able to think about anything else. But he can’t keep himself from, “Elizabeth—Elizabeth Weir?”

The captain shakes his head. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t heard anything about her status.”

Daniel sends him a quick, compassionate glance, and then says, “Jack O’Neill?”

The captain shakes his head again. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.”

Daniel lets out a breath. “All right. Fine. Should we—have some way to get in contact with you?”

“I’m not authorized to give away contact information, sir, not to anyone. We’ll find you.”

“Well, then, okay,” says Daniel. “Get back to your base.”

“Yes, sir,” says Granger, and he and his men move out.

John and Daniel and Thorman and Li stand around and stare at each other for a while.

“You think they’re who they say they are, sir?” Li asks eventually.

“No idea,” says John. He wants to believe it, he wants, he wants—he remembers the crazy eyes and Davis’ desiccated husk. And there’s no question it could be a trick—get a bunch of guys, dress them up in USAF uniforms, build up a trust, find out if there’s anything more to the operation, wipe them all out from space once all necessary intelligence has been gathered. Dangle Rodney and Carter in front of them to mess with their heads a little more.

It could be true, though. It could be.

“Let’s get back,” says Daniel finally, and they go.

 

The big question: the operation.

“They could be genuine,” Daniel says. “Maybe we should hold off—Sam could show up next week, and then we’d know for sure.” He’s holding a pen, and he keeps glancing down, staring at it like it holds the secrets of the universe.

John makes an effort at skepticism. “Darts could show up next week. Or tomorrow. And even if they are from the Stargate program, if they have Carter and McKay or not, there’s no guarantee they’re all going to think this is a good idea. And if they’ve got a full colonel or a general, or even a member of the government, they can tell us what to do.” John thinks about that: good, bad, good?

“They can tell _you_ what to do,” says Daniel.

“Okay, so they’ll _think_ they can tell us what to do,” says John. “But who knows how many of the troops will stay with us if there’s a member of the Joint Chiefs hanging out in Oregon or wherever?”

“Point,” says Daniel.

“And it could be a trap,” says John.

“And it could be a trap,” says Daniel. “If it is, and if they’re gathering information instead of just confirming our location so they can wipe us out tonight, then they’ll probably take as much time as they said they’d take, to avoid suspicion. Can we do this inside of a week?”

“Darts?” says John.

“Twelve,” says Daniel. “Check.”

“Personnel?”

“Pilots, doing okay, according to you. Numbers, about three people per dart.”

“Explosives?”

“With that last stash from Arizona, plus what Granville’s been working on, plus what Dr. Sim sent us, we have at least enough for twelve Hive ships.”

John takes a deep breath. “Okay. Looks like we’re doing this.”

 

They haven’t really sat down and talked about how this is a suicide mission.

Of course, John’s gone on plenty of those and survived, but he doesn’t usually have quite this _long_ to think about it before, planning and arranging and training and building up to go out and get himself and a few dozen other people killed.

And Daniel—

Daniel actually comes to _John’s_ room a couple of nights later, which is new. He’s quiet and intense, and he fucks John carefully, with great concentration. John makes a lot of noise. Daniel doesn’t.

Afterwards, they’re lying tangled up on John’s bed, and Daniel says into his shoulder, “I’m sick of this.”

“What?” says John intelligently.

Daniel rolls onto his back. “I’m wondering if I’ll come back this time.” Dry chuckle. “And I feel ridiculous about it. But I’m still wondering.”

“Oh,” says John, and thinks about it. “How many times—”

“Really depends on how you count,” says Daniel. 

John drops it, and after a second, Daniel goes on. “I’m hoping the Ancients are done with me by now, but…” he opens a hand. “No idea.”

That gets John’s attention away from post-sex glow. “You’re _hoping_?”

He feels Daniel’s shrug. “I’m tired. More to the point, I’m sick of being killed and brought back.” He pauses, shifts against John’s side. “I used to think that Ascension was…it. The point. The meaning. Whatever. Now…I’m almost looking forward to dying and _staying_ that way. Then at least I could have some _peace_.”

“I mostly don't think about dying,” says John. “It gets in the way.”

Daniel’s quiet for a while. Eventually, he says, “Good advice. Do you want to fuck me?”

“What?” says John, startled. They haven’t done this yet. He’d figured that either Daniel didn’t like it, or getting fucked was an item in the list of his many, many issues.

“I’m not going to say it again,” says Daniel quietly.

“Yes,” says John on a breath, and then stronger, “yeah. Yeah, I want to fuck you.”

“Good,” says Daniel, and rolls onto his stomach in one graceful motion. He’s naked, and John reaches out to run his hands over his back, watch him as he arches a little and keeps arching, as John moves his hands further down.

Daniel really wants this. The idea is so intensely hot that John has to take a second to breathe, before grabbing for the lube.

Daniel’s responsive, mostly. He resists in little hiccups, like he’s forgotten, just for a second, that he wants it, tensing and twitching a little around John’s fingers in his ass. But the rest of the time, he’s pliant under John, letting John spread him and touch him and finger him, his head resting on his folded arms.

When John slides into him, Daniel’s eyes are closed. He tenses up, all over—his fists clench, even, and John freezes, waiting. And, after a second, Daniel breathes, and relaxes, and John starts moving again, slowly.

It’s hard to believe he’s fucking Daniel. He would have sworn that Daniel was wound so tight that a good fucking would break him into pieces. Instead, he’s pushing back onto John, fingers curling into the mattress, sweat darkening his hair.

He’s absolutely silent, though. It’s almost reassuring, that there’s something a little weird about it.

 

They spend the next day briefing. Or, Daniel briefs, and John sits and makes peanut gallery comments and doodles and tries to work out how to translate _im in ur base, killin ur doodz_ into Wraith, just so he can send it to all the queens right before they detonate the bombs.

It’s possible he’s getting a little punchy.

“Three-man crews, except for McConnell and Vautour, and Colonel Sheppard and myself,” says Daniel, and, “By now, you all should have memorized the best structural points for setting the bombs,” and, “Security is lax, but none of us can take on an entire Hive ship ourselves, so _don’t be seen_ ,” and finally, “Get out alive if you can. But the mission takes first priority.”

 

Despite all the worst-case speculations, it’s _possible_ that the guys from the hangar were telling the truth. Daniel agrees with him, so that evening, they head over to the hangar and leave a note.

Daniel lets John write it. _Gone on a secret mission_ , he puts. _If we’re not back when you get this, we’re probably all dead. Feel free to take advantage of the confusion. Wish we could have gotten to know you guys better._

“It’s good to know we aren’t depriving Earth of its last defense by going to our deaths,” says John, and it’s funny, but it’s also true. “They can pick up the good fight right where we left off.”

“Lucky them,” says Daniel.

Objectively, John would really rather not die. He would especially rather not die if suddenly he is _not_ the only Atlantean alive on Earth. But—continuing Atlantean tradition, if nothing else—if he has to die, nuking a whole fuckload of Wraith is a pretty good way.

 

“So we’re probably going to get killed tomorrow,” says John.

“Your point?”

“If you have any last sex requests, make them now.”

Daniel looks at him for a little longer than is comfortable, and finally says, “Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Hey,” says John, because _yes_ , but that isn’t the point. “I asked you.”

“I don’t see why—”

“Come on,” he says. Letting Daniel argue is not the way to go, if John wants to hear something real. “There has to be something you want.”

He gets Daniel to stop and think about it, which is progress. But then a while goes by, and Daniel’s still thinking.

“So?” he says finally.

Daniel frowns. “I don’t know,” he says, and he’s laughing a little, but not like it’s funny.

“You don’t _—_ ”

“I don’t know,” Daniel repeats. “Presented with the option of any sexual act I could desire, I am at a loss.” He glances up. “Is that sad?”

“Daniel—”

“It’s sad,” Daniel says. “It’s about par for the course, though. I—” he shakes his head. “Could you just—” He drops down on the bed, lies back. “Come here?”

John goes. Daniel tilts his head back for a kiss, keeps his eyes closed, opens his mouth when John does. His legs fall apart, but he doesn’t seem in a hurry to do anything, just reaches up, pulling John down against him. 

All they do is kiss and rub up against each other, but it’s hot as hell, somehow. All fun, no work; John could do this all day, sweat and kissing and riding this long plateau of pleasure. Daniel’s eyes are still closed, his head back, his mouth open. And when he comes, he says John’s name.

 

The next day, twelve of them get into their darts while the rest wait on the ground. John looks down at the group standing there, waiting to be swept up and disintegrated and stored in the memory of a Wraith dart, and sees them frightened, freaked-out, furious. Daniel’s looking up, standing apart from the little groups, waiting for John.

“All right,” says John. “Let’s do this.”

He waits while McConnell goes. Then Thorman. Asato. One after the other, passing over the crowd and sweeping up another couple of guys, until all of them have gone and Daniel’s the only one left standing.

“Okay,” says John to himself. “Don’t fuck this up.” And he circles around and starts his pass, engages the beam and dematerializes Daniel into the dart computer.

 

John hates flying the darts, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s flying, and now he’s accelerating up and _out_ into space for the first time in months, watching the sky darken from blue to black, the stars coming out, darts sparkling all around him.

And sure, he’s probably flying to his death, but that’s pretty familiar by now. 


	5. Chapter 5

The inside of the Hive ship is familiar, like a dart times a thousand, the Wraith…ness yawning out around him. He’s more careful with the rematerializing than he was the last time he did this, because while he thinks he might rather do this alone, he’s not about to let Daniel fall into a bottomless Wraith pit.

“Fascinating,” says Daniel, staring around at the squishy green-gray-brown-black around them. “And…ew.”

“I usually just go with _ew_ , myself,” says John. “Okay, let’s nuke this place.”

It’s ridiculously simple. They have a fucking _nuke_ ; it’s not going to matter where they put it, it’ll take out the whole ship. All they have to do is haul it out of the dart, set it up on the catwalk, start the timer, which is set for half an hour, and head back to the dart and leave.

So John sets it up, Daniel enters the code for the timer, sets it at thirty minutes, which is the estimated time until the team assigned to the furthest Hive ship is safely off and away, and then they sort of stand there and look at it. 

Daniel and John got the closest ship, because they have the most experience sneaking around on enemy ships for extended periods of time. The others—well, if anyone and/or their bomb is in danger of being seen, they have orders to set it off as fast as possible, but if everyone sticks to the timeline, this will probably all be more effective. 

“It can’t be that easy,” says Daniel.

“Maybe we should try and hide it, so nobody sees it before the timer goes off and spaces it,” John suggests.

So they push it behind a big column of organic Hive ship crap, where it’s just a corner of shiny metal peeking out from behind the green-brown-blackness.

They stand there a little more.

“Anything else to do?” John asks finally.

“Well, we could stay here until the last second, just to be _sure_ no one finds it in the next twenty-five minutes,” says Daniel.

“Well,” says John, “the keys are in the car. Say ten minutes at the outside to go from standing here to outside the blast range. So if we want to hang around for another fifteen minutes, we probably won’t be killed in the explosion.”

“On the other hand, our presence could tip off any wandering Wraith off, where a random piece of half-hidden equipment might not,” Daniel points out.

“There’s that.”

They contemplate for another second. Eventually, Daniel says, “Well, unless you want to join the thousand-miles-high club—”

John looks around and shudders. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“—then I vote we leave.”

“Good plan,” says John. They head for the dart.

Weirdly enough, nothing goes wrong. John gets in the ship, sweeps Daniel up, and leaves. And then they’re out in space, and there’s still twelve minutes on the clock.

They’ve planned the explosions to go off together, so as to give the Wraith the least amount of time possible to figure things out, communicate with each other, and start looking for hidden bombs. So they shouldn’t be seeing anything for another five or ten minutes.

Just for those twelve minutes, John lets himself fantasize about what happens if they’re a hundred percent successful, if every single Hive ship is destroyed. Okay, so—then what?

There’s still a metric crapload of darts, and a hell of a lot of Wraith on the surface. Probably at least a few of the darts swarming around in space will be caught up in the explosions. All the queens will be gone, so—assuming the queens are necessary for Wraith reproduction, which, John doesn’t really know and _really_ doesn’t want to know, but he figures probably—there won’t be any more.

Humanity can deal with a finite number of Wraith. They’ll just kill them one at a time until they’re all dead. It might take a little while, but it’s going to happen.

Then rebuilding. And—well, there has to be at least _one_ hyperspace-capable ship still around, or if not, some ally somewhere who’s going to come looking for them. John’s a little fuzzy on the details of people like the Tok’ra, the Nox, the Jaffa, and the Asgard, but he does know that they show up occasionally, and Daniel said that Teal’c was offworld, so _someone_ has to know that Earth’s in trouble. Someone will show up to reconnoiter, and when they see how much ass humanity has kicked, they’ll come down to talk. Or someone on Earth will have a ship, hidden somewhere. Which means they can get out there into the galaxy again, and _someone, somewhere_ will go to an uninhabited planet and _get them a fucking Stargate_ , and Atlantis will dial in—they’ve probably been trying for God knows how long. And John is in no way personally necessary to the rebuilding of civilization on Earth, and—

Maybe.

Six minutes.

John wonders what Daniel wants to do, after this. If _he_ were Daniel, he thinks he’d want to pick a nice planet somewhere, maybe with a lot of libraries and some cool excavations, and then pack up a few rooms’ worth of books, load them on a MALP, and go study in peace for the next twenty years.

It’s possible, though, that Daniel will want to—okay, not _want_ to, but it’s possible that he _will_ stay on Earth and help civilization rebuild. He’d be good at it, John thinks. He’d definitely do a better job than John would.

He’d hate it, though. John has only known Daniel in the context of a desperate guerilla war, but he’s seen Daniel with people and he _knows_ Daniel would hate it.

Two minutes.

One minute.

And it starts. The first Hive ship, right next to John and Daniel’s ship, breaks apart in a silent cloud of fire. Then another one, further away. And then theirs. Enormous blooms of light, oxygen in the ship burning in the explosion.

John watches, keeping his breathing steady, looking back and forth between his display, which is pretty distinctive even if it’s in Wraith, and the forward window, and counts. Three. 

Five. Six. 

Eight.

Darkness.

Nothing.

Nothing for five minutes. Ten.

Four Hive ships left. Four is still too many.

Security will be up. They aren’t going to be able to do this again. Four Hive ships will have no problem keeping Earth subdued.

Calm down, John thinks. The other bombs might still go off.

But the minutes go by and the minutes go by, and he’s pretty sure they won’t.

 

So this is it. They’re going to have to head back down—who knows if any of the other teams even _survived_ , there’s no one left at the base, it could be just him and Daniel. Or—no, worse, John thinks, it could be him and Daniel and two or three men. Still a command, still a responsibility, still a reason not to go crazy or run away.

He’s glad Daniel isn’t here. He doesn’t want to be there when Daniel finds out that it didn’t work, but it’s going to take some Machiavellian maneuvering to keep that from happening.

He’s just about to start swearing and head back to Earth, through the swarming clouds of confused and upset darts, when a hole opens up in space and something shoots through.

For a second, John thinks, _more Hive ships, waiting for something like this_ —but how would they know? Were they waiting at the edge of the solar system?—but why the hell would they _do_ that?—and then he recognizes the gold, the pyramid shapes, and he thinks, _Goa’uld_ , _they’re taking advantage while we’re down_.

But—

The first ship, that wasn’t a Goa’uld. That was the fucking _Daedalus_.

And—holy _fuck_ —on an open channel—“This is Colonel Caldwell of the _Daedalus_ , together with the allied ships of the Jaffa Nation. Any humans listening in, please acknowledge. Hive ships, surrender or prepare to be destroyed.”

There’s a second before John can manage to open a comm channel, where his hands are shaking and he starts to hyperventilate. He gets it under control, and tries, “Colonel Caldwell, this is Sheppard. I’m up here in a dart.”

John sometimes worries about the Pavlovian reactions he’s developing around Caldwell’s voice, which has been the first thing letting him know he’s not going to die…several times, now. 

He’s not going to complain too hard about it, though.

“Sheppard,” says Caldwell, and oh yeah, John would know that sarcasm anywhere. “Somehow, I’m not surprised. We’re locking on to your signal, we’ll beam you aboard.”

“No,” says John, “I’ve got someone dematerialized. I’ll need to dock.”

“Come on aboard, then, Colonel Sheppard,” says Caldwell, and John really _tries_ not to let the sardonic tone make him feel better, and fails utterly.

 

Onboard, he zaps Daniel back into existence. Daniel blinks around at the docking bay.

“Um. Where are we?”

“On the _Daedalus_ ,” says John.

Daniel rubs a hand over his eyes. “So help me, if you tell me that it’s been over a year, _or_ that I’ve been dead again, or _both_ —”

“Calm down,” says John, “it’s been like half an hour. The _Daedalus_ showed up from hyperspace with a bunch of Jaffa ships right after the bombs went off.”

“…of course it did,” says Daniel. He spends a second just shaking his head, and then he says, “You know, one of these days I’m going to be more annoyed than grateful that things _always happen like this_.”

“Yeah,” says John, “I don’t think I’ve been doing this long enough to get past grateful.”

“You’ll get there,” says Daniel. “Let’s find the bridge.”

“This way,” says John, and they start off.

On the bridge, Caldwell glances up, looking like he wants to roll his eyes but won’t out of respect for the USAF. When he sees Daniel, he double-takes. Which is pretty fun to watch.

“Dr. Jackson,” he says. “I had no idea you were still alive.”

“Yeah, well,” says Daniel, “that’s me. Like a bad penny. Or…something.”

“We’re all grateful you survived,” says Caldwell, and he actually sounds like he means it. John considers making a comment about feeling hurt, but lets it alone.

“Well, I’m…grateful, too,” says Daniel. “For the rescue. You showed up…in the nick of time.” He gets it out with a mostly straight face.

“What’s going on?” John saves him, not that he deserves it.

“The Hive ships aren’t surrendering, no surprise. We’ve begun maneuvering toward them. I’m confident in our combined firepower.” Caldwell does look confident. He also looks…clean, and well-groomed. And surrounded by technology. John’s jealous. And no matter what Pavlov might be doing to John’s brain, he’s kind of sick of being rescued from desperate suicidal situations by confident, heavily-armed Caldwell.

“Well…good,” says John.

He thinks about volunteering to take a fighter out—or go out again in the dart, they won’t be expecting fire from one of their own—but, well, the _Daedalus_ has a full complement of fighter pilots, and one more fucking fighter isn’t going to make much of a difference.

“Hey,” says Daniel.

“What?” says John.

Daniel has his arm in a firm grip, and he’s tugging John over to the side of the bridge. At the wall, he lets go of John and slides down to sit on the floor. He stretches his legs out and looks up at John.

“…yeah, okay,” says John, and sits down next to him.

“I think we did our part,” says Daniel.

“I think so,” says John.

“Plus, there isn’t really anything else for us to do.”

“Also true,” says John. “They can clean up after us.”

“I heard that,” says Novak. She turns to look at them, and grins. “Thanks, guys. That was amazing. How did you pull it off?”

Daniel takes a breath, and then lets it out. “It’s a long story.”

“Oh, yeah, got it,” says Novak. And then, “oh, whoops, there’s a Hive ship. Talk to guys a little later, maybe.”

John looks at Daniel. “The defenders of the human race.”

“I’m used to it. I mean, Jack.”

“Right,” says John.

“And _you_ ,” Daniel adds.

“Hey,” says John. “You’re almost as bad.”

“I know,” says Daniel. “I get away with it a lot more, for some reason.”

“Civilian,” says John.

“I like to think it’s seniority,” says Daniel. “The only people who could possibly have me beat for most times saving the world are Sam, Jack, or Teal’c. And Jack’s been out of the field a couple of years, now.”

John thinks about it. “Carter probably wins.”

“Probably,” says Daniel. “But she likes me.”

 

“Sir,” says an airman, “we picked up some more of your people.”

John, who was drifting into a doze, not at all leaning against Daniel, lifts his head up and sees McConnell and Vautour. “Hey,” he says, and he can hear how happy he sounds, “nice to see you guys. Have a seat. The floor’s really nice.”

“Looks really nice, sir,” says McConnell, and slides down next to him, Vautour on his other side. “I hear we did good.”

“We did good, and now we get to take the backseat for a while. Relax a little,” says John.

“Sounds great, sir,” says McConnell. _He_ sounds like he isn’t up to conversation much more complicated than that, so John just grins at him, and settles back.

Daniel’s fallen asleep, head tilted back. His side is pressed all against John’s, warm and solid. John leans back, too, and goes back to dozing.

 

They get thrown around a little, and the lights fizzle out and partially back a few times, and there’s sparks, but that’s only once, and then it’s over.

“And that’s all,” says Daniel, who woke up when the sparks started flying. “Done, just like that.”

John shrugs a little, knows Daniel can feel it. “Yeah, but they would have had a hell of a time taking on _twelve_ Hive ships.”

“True,” says Daniel. The lights are still dim, and they’re pressed up against each other, Daniel warm and relaxed and a little sleepy, and John has a brief, suicidal urge to push Daniel up against the bridge wall and start a long, slow makeout session.

Although at this point, they probably wouldn’t kick him out for it.

Still, John keeps his hands to himself and, after a second of contemplation, pushes himself to his feet. Daniel makes a brief noise of protest. John flicks his temple, which gets him a louder noise, and wanders over to Caldwell’s chair.

“How goes it, sir?” he asks.

“Just fine, Colonel Sheppard. We have you and Dr. Jackson, and your people, to thank for that. If we still have an institution to give them, and if there’s any justice, you’ll all be receiving medals.”

“Thanks, sir,” says John, a little surprised, “but it _is_ kind of enough to know that we saved the planet.”

“You did, Colonel,” says Caldwell. “You did.”

And then there’s an uncomfortable moment where John processes that Caldwell’s seriously happy with him, which is new and different, although understandable given the circumstances, he guesses.

“Yes, sir,” he says. “What’s next?”

“What’s next is we get some of our people on the surface up here and assess the situation. Communications is contacting them right now, and once we’ve locked on and beamed them up, we’ll consult with them on what to do next.”

And John’s dizzy, suddenly—he hadn’t even thought to _ask_ , he was distracted, he was brain-damaged, he was _something_ —and now his brain really has stopped working, or it’s working twice as fast, probabilities clicking through on fast-forward—“Sir, are the people from Area 51 really alive? Do you know who—”

“I don’t know who’s alive, Colonel Sheppard,” says Caldwell, and yeah, there’s that familiar tone back again, “because we could only exchange the briefest of transmissions before the _Daedalus_ left to get help, to avoid alerting the Wraith. I’m as anxious as you are to find out who survived. Wait a few minutes, and we’ll have the ones we beam up give us a full personnel list.”

And sure enough, there’s the big flash of light, and suddenly there are ten or fifteen more bodies on the bridge, milling around, making surprised and/or happy noises, except for—

“—adequate _warning_ before the transportation would have been nice, and if someone could give me independent confirmation of what we think we saw on the radar down there—”

“Rodney,” says John, and something really isn’t working in his head, now, because—

“—and I—John.” Rodney stops, sound off but mouth still working, staring at John.

“Rodney,” says John again, and stupidly, “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought _you_ were dead,” says Rodney, and he looks _angry_ —“you were supposed to be in the mountain, we left you in the mountain, they said the mountain was destroyed—”

“I was outside of it,” says John. Rodney looks exhausted, and thinner, and older, and still shocked out of his mind. John takes a step forward, because he can’t help himself, and once he’s started, well.

Rodney returns the hug, solid against John, familiar and comforting, and—reassuring. John holds on for longer than he expected to, everything quiet and happy in his head for once.

Eventually, reluctantly, he lets go. Rodney’s staring at him, mouth slightly open like it always is when he’s surprised, eyes searching John’s face like he’s looking for signs of an imposter. 

And—he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t admit this to himself in a less emotionally vulnerable moment—John feels safer, suddenly. Which is stupid, it’s a false sense of security, but it’s true, it’s been true for a while. Enough of what Rodney does is totally beyond John that there’s always the _possibility_ that Rodney can fix whatever goes wrong, always some chance that he’ll pull some brilliant solution out of the air—and he keeps _reinforcing_ the hypothesis, so it’s not like John can really help it—and John hasn’t realized how much he’s missed that, the last two months.

“I am _so sick_ of you and the dying thing,” says Rodney. “Don’t do it again.”

“I’ll try, Rodney,” says John.

“Oh, you better _believe_ you’ll try, you’ll do _more_ than try—” Rodney shakes his head. “I—” 

And John sees that his eyes are wet, and he almost takes another step forward, but stops himself in time. “Rodney—”

“I’m fine,” says Rodney, “I’m fine. Shock of the moment. I’ll be over it in a second. What the hell is Daniel Jackson doing here?”

John automatically looks over at Daniel. He’s having a reunion too, but with even more hugging. All John can really see are arms and a bright blonde head smushed against Daniel’s sweat-stiff brown spikes. “We’ve been…hanging out,” he says. “The past couple months. Us and a bunch of airmen. We took out eight of those Hive ships,” he can’t help but point out.

“Huh,” says Rodney. “I wondered why they seemed to magically explode before our ships even got here. That was you?”

“Yep,” says John. “Well, me and a bunch of other people. Daniel included.”

“Huh,” says Rodney again. “I never would have guessed that you guys would get along.”

And John tries to think of something to say to that, he does, but he just ends up laughing until he almost has to sit down on the floor of the _Daedalus_ ’s bridge.

 

And then it’s over.

 

In addition to John and Daniel and McConnell and Vautour, three teams survived. The other seven were—somethinged. Four of them were probably caught in the act, given the unexploded Hive ships. Maybe the other three were caught after they armed the bomb, or couldn’t get out in time and were blown up in their ships. John hopes to _God_ that none of them are inside an intact dart computer somewhere, although he supposes that inevitably, all the darts will be either destroyed or salvaged, so it won’t be forever.

They hold services for them. On the surface, outside of their little base. Daniel reads a prayer he translated, from some ancient something. Afterward, John remembers it was beautiful, but he doesn’t remember any of the words.

Their surviving people salute them, and they disperse gently. They can call to be beamed up whenever, said Caldwell, and they’re taking advantage, standing by the graves. Some of their mouths are moving, some of them are crying. John takes few minutes, remembering all of them, one by one, and then he moves off to the side, toward their complex, and keeps moving until he’s around a corner and behind a wall.

Daniel’s behind him. John reaches out, sets his hand on the back of Daniel’s head, and pulls him in to kiss.

It’s the first time they’ve kissed without sex happening at the same time. Since the first time, anyway, the very first time when John was in the process of flipping out and Daniel had been the closest thing to an anchor around, warm and golden and candlelit, and—John kisses harder, and if his eyes are wet, no one’s looking.

 

So now they’re based onboard the _Daedalus_ , pretty much because they aren’t sure how safe the surface is. The first day, John goes and finds Rodney, and they go to the mess.

“It was terrible,” says Rodney, after they’ve gotten their food and sat down. “Because there was _nothing I could do_. The sheer volume—the lack of resources—and the fucking politicians,” and this is Rodney at his most bitter, “who wouldn’t have let us do anything even if we could have, because Earth’s _government_ needed to be preserved and protected. Of all the moronic—I told them that I’d recognize them as Earth’s government when they started governing any part of Earth larger than a city block.” He bites into his bread, says with his mouth full, “They don’t like me very much.”

“Never stopped you before,” says John, who’s trying not to be obvious about grinning really, really hard.

“Ha,” says Rodney, “no it didn’t, and I fully believe that anyone who can’t appreciate my finer qualities needs a serious reorganization of their priorities. Even Sam has admitted that she likes me.”

John raises his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

Rodney points a fork at him. “You’re mocking me, but it’s true, and remember that I knew it _all along_.” He looks smug.

“Okay,” says John, “but how many times did she threaten to kill you?”

Rodney winces. “Approximately four hundred and fifty-two, although I can only vouch for the times she said it directly to me. But!” he brightens, “she hugged me when we found out about the Hive ships being destroyed.”

“Well,” says John, “continuous exposure does kind of wear a person down.”

“ _You_ can stop talking now,” says Rodney, and then contradicts with, “so what about you, what about Dr. Jackson and the merry airmen?” And more seriously, “Was it terrible?”

“Pretty much,” says John, “yeah. But Daniel—he’s a good guy. He was good to have around.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d get along,” says Rodney, for the second time, and now he’s watching John carefully, not eating.

“We—” _don’t_ , but that’s wrong. They do. Somehow. “We managed. We can work with each other. Around each other,” says John instead, and that’s not the way it is, either, but he can’t explain it, and he doesn’t think he would say it out loud even if he could, even if he wanted to.

“Okay,” says Rodney, and there’s a second’s pause, and then he says, “So anyway, Sam and I rigged this shield at the last second, in Area 51, that uses Goa’uld technology in a way no one’s ever done before—I wanted to call it the McKay-Carter Technique, but she said—”

John feels his grin finding its way back to his face. This is good.

 

Most of the people in charge are spending most of their waking hours down on the surface, trying to figure out how bad everything is so they can try to fix it, trying to locate the people who are the most capable so they can recruit them to help. John’s conscripted to go along as military escort once, gets treated to _the U.S. government knew about aliens and didn’t_ tell anyone _and look what happened_. Which is hard for the politicians to counter, especially since it’s mostly true, although they try. John learns that the recovery and rebuilding are promising to be the most massive, messy, disgustingly impossible efforts ever made in human history, and that everyone knows that the invasion was all their fault.

When he can, John stays as far away from all of it as possible.

The first time he starts off toward Daniel’s room—cabin—and then realizes he doesn’t know where it is, he experiences a couple seconds of severe cognitive dissonance. He asks around until he finds out, and gets there as fast as possible, trying to shake the feeling that Daniel’s disappeared because John hasn’t seen him for a couple of days.

“Oh, hey,” says Daniel. “Something up?”

“Hiding,” says John, and drops down on Daniel’s bed. “You?”

“Same,” says Daniel, and they look at each other for a second, and then they’re kissing, and John pushes Daniel back onto the bed. Which is unusual, but Daniel relaxes under him, holds John’s face in his hands while they kiss, strokes his thumbs across John’s cheekbones and down in front of his ears, to his neck and his collarbone until he’s pulling at the black T-shirt. John sits up, gets it over his head, and Daniel’s eyes are traveling over John, over his chest and shoulders and arms, and it’s the stare that John’s hated forever, turning him on, making him hard.

“Pants,” says Daniel—topping from the bottom, surprise—and John pulls at the laces of his boots, kicks them to the floor, gets his pants and his boxers off together.

“Good,” says Daniel, “now me.” He helps with that, and then he’s naked under John, looking up at him, serious. “Kiss me,” he says finally, and John leans down. Daniel comes up to meet him, and they’re kissing again, and Daniel’s controlling the speed, depth, angle, his fingers light pressure on John’s temples, cheekbones, into his hair.

And it continues like that; John’s on top, but Daniel’s fingers are careful and his mouth is insistent and John slowly loses track of what’s going on, his brain gone missing somewhere against Daniel’s mouth. They’re just moving against each other, but the longer it goes on, the less he can think, the better it gets.

 

The next day, John learns that someone had intelligence about possible locations for Elizabeth’s group of politicians, and someone else went around checking them, and someone came up and reported that they found one of the places, completely charred, with the dogtags of all the military people who were supposed to be with the group. Included are General Jack O’Neill’s.

 

John locks himself in his cabin after he hears the news—as good a confirmation as they’re going to get that Elizabeth’s dead—and seals the door, standing with his back against it. He’s lightheaded and he’s shaking and his breath is coming too fast, quick sharp gasps, hurting his chest, making his eyes water.

He tries to be reasonable—he tries to think, so many people have died, _billions_ of people. It was always possible—probable, even—that Elizabeth had died in the original attack. There was nothing anyone could have done.

It doesn’t help.

 

Eventually, he makes himself calm down. He takes a shower, forces himself to leave the cabin. He goes to the mess to prove he can eat food like a normal person.

He’s toying with his mashed potatoes when he sees Rodney, red-eyed and shaken, appear in one of the doorways. He leaves as fast as he can, before Rodney can see him.

 

He gets through the day. It’s hard to remember what he does, though.

 

He gets through the next day, too, but that night, he goes to Daniel’s door and knocks. Daniel’s eyes are red when he answers, but his face is dry. He drops down on the bunk and sweeps his hand out, indicating the seat next to him.

John sits. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” says Daniel. His voice is raspy.

“I’m sorry about General O’Neill,” says John.

“Thank you,” says Daniel. “I’m sorry about Dr. Weir. I didn’t know her for very long, and,” he smiles, almost, “I wasn’t very nice to her—”

“Surprise,” says John.

That gets a short laugh. “But I’ll miss her. I liked her.”

“Thanks,” says John. “I didn’t know General O’Neill very long, either, and—well, he wasn’t very nice to _me_ —”

Another quick laugh, almost choked off.

“I liked him too, though,” says John.

“Jack,” says Daniel, “Jack was—oh, God.” And he’s got his hand over his eyes, breathing raggedly. “Like a piece of myself,” he says. “Of all the fucking—” he stops, lips pressed into a thin line. After a second, he says, “Stay here tonight.”

Neither of them has asked that out loud, before now. “Yes,” says John, “okay.”

 

He and Rodney don’t really talk about it. Neither of them want to.

 

John can’t really _do_ anything for Daniel, can’t make anything easier, or better. Daniel and General O’Neill were—whatever they were—for ten _years_. He thinks about losing Teyla or Rodney or Ronon seven or eight years from now, when they’ve been going on missions forever and living in each others’ pockets and they’re practically married.

Like a piece of himself, he thinks, and shudders.

Daniel tells him, a little later, that it wasn’t just O’Neill. There was another friend of Daniel’s down there, Vala. John asks, “Why was she there?”and Daniel says, “I wanted her safe, and she went with it because she thought she could run the country better than those—bozos.” And he laughs, his short, sharp, unhappy laugh. 

“And Cameron,” he adds after a second, “Colonel Mitchell, SG-1’s new leader. He went up with the first wave of fighters, and he was killed in the space battle.”

He’s quiet after that, and John says, “You liked him?”

“Sometimes,” says Daniel, and laughs. “He wouldn’t have liked that, as a eulogy. Or maybe he would have been grateful just for that much, I don’t know.”

That’s three members of SG-1, former and new, dead. Carter and Teal’c are still alive—Teal’c was offworld, and John’s heard that he came on one of the Jaffa ships, and that Daniel has spent some time over there with him—but still. John is glad, again, that he made most of the population of Atlantis, and Teyla and Ronon especially, stay at home.

 

Daniel doesn’t want sex and he doesn’t want sex and he doesn’t want sex, and then, suddenly, he does, and John is left wondering what kind of fucked-up coping mechanism he gets to be _now_ , while Daniel fucks him slowly, slowly, _agonizingly_ slowly, and John bends his head and grits his teeth and gasps into the pillows.

“What,” John gasps raggedly, “what—”

“I need to feel somethingelse,” says Daniel through his teeth. “Something _good_.”

It’s a weird, backwards comfort to know that, despite being in orbit around a liberated Earth instead of in a fallout shelter under the Wraith-occupied ground, Daniel is still the same.

And—John tries not to be a little bit happy, lying fucked-out on the mattress with Daniel’s hand resting on the back of his neck, and fails. _Something good_.

 

There are still some Wraith, in darts around the planet, on the surface, that Caldwell and the Jaffa are slowly whittling down. The Wraith are so massively outgunned, though, that it’s pretty much a game. Hunt-the-lifesuckers.

John goes with them a couple of times, working up his nerve, and finally, when they’re heading back to orbit in a cargo ship after an extended hunting session, he pulls Caldwell aside. “Sir,” he starts.

“Yes, Colonel Sheppard, I’ll be bringing the news to Atlantis once we’re confident that the Wraith presence is mostly extinguished,” says Caldwell. “And I’ve requested on your behalf that you be returned to Atlantis, and received a go-ahead. McKay has insisted he go back as well.”

John’s mouth opens, and he can hear, “Thank you, sir,” coming out, but he’s mostly focusing on keeping himself standing upright. “I didn’t think—”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, Sheppard,” says Caldwell. “One of the Jaffa ships has gone to get a Stargate from an uninhabited world for Earth, and some of the others are going to stay and keep an eye on things from orbit. Earth has a lot of built-up credit from freeing the galaxy of Goa’uld. One lieutenant colonel more or less isn’t going to make a difference.”

John’s blinking a little too hard, and he’s really just liking Caldwell _too much_ right now. But if he’s going back to Atlantis, he doesn’t care.

 

No one really knows what time it is, anymore; people are going down to, and coming back up from, all different places on Earth, and the _Daedalus_ crew has been working around the clock for weeks, grabbing sleep whenever they can get it. But it’s quiet and semidark when John walks through the hallways to Daniel’s room and knocks, as close to night as it ever gets.

Daniel’s awake, of course. He opens the door with a pencil in one hand; he’s twirling it through his fingers. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi.” John wanders in, doesn’t stop once he’s in. Daniel brought up all the stuff he’d accumulated down in Vermont, random things stolen from random stores in random places, books and statuettes and his chess set. John picks up a little figurine that looks ancient—although not Ancient—and turns it around in his hands. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” says Daniel, sounding a little wary. “You?”

“I—we, Rodney and me—we’re going back to Atlantis,” John says, tripping over the words.

The pencil stops twirling. “Good,” says Daniel, and he’s impossible to read. “I wasn’t sure they were going to let you. I would have thought they’d want people here. Rodney especially. Maybe even that they’d cancel the Atlantis mission and bring everyone back to help out.”

“Apparently they decided that it was a good idea to have _one_ solid, experienced, militarily capable group of Earth humans around, while the rest of mankind was vulnerable. For repopulation, at least, if this place gets destroyed, although you should hear what Rodney said about genetic variation when he heard about that.” John can’t help smiling—Rodney’s alive and bitching!—just for a second. “And even if we are in the Pegasus galaxy, it’s possible for us to come home and help in an emergency. Plus we could still find the magical bottomless power source to solve all our problems.” 

And one of the things he’s always loved about Pegasus is that they really could, somewhere. Nothing says it’s impossible. And if they have to blow up a few uninhabited solar systems to get there, well, omelet, eggs, whatever.

Daniel’s quiet. John adds, “Also I think the guys in charge wanted McKay far, far away.”

“Probably,” says Daniel, but he’s not smiling.

“So we’re leaving,” John repeats.

“Good,” says Daniel again. “I’m—happy for you.”

He’s bland, still, expressionless, and that propels John forward. “So what about you? You got anything lined up?”

Daniel’s fingers are white-knuckled, gripping the pencil. “Well, Earth’s been through a lot. They can use people who are used to walking into hostile situations and making people play nice. There’s—” he gestures with the pencil, “enormous amounts of work to do. It’s going to take years. Decades. And this rebuilding could be the first step towards a truly united Earth, a world government, everyone knowing about the Stargate and the…the universe out there.” He closes his eyes for a second. “Or so I’m told. Anyway, they can use me in negotiations, in government-building, in…subduing the populace.” His mouth twitches.

“So this is what you want,” says John.

The pencil snaps in two, a high, sharp cracking sound. Daniel opens his hand, and the pieces fall to the floor.

“No,” he says.

John waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. Finally, John says, “Well. I’ve got this—extra cruise ticket.”

“A cruise ticket.”

“Intergalactic,” says John. “Usually costs a fortune.”

“I—have obligations,” says Daniel. His eyes are closed.

After Caldwell gave him the good news, John sat down and spent some time thinking about this. He thought about Daniel, about sitting in space thinking _maybe he’d want to maybe pick a nice planet somewhere, maybe with a lot of libraries and some cool excavations, and then pack up a few rooms’ worth of books, load them on a MALP, and go study in peace for the next twenty years._

Because at some point, John had thought, _hey, wouldn’t it be cool if_ , and really, if Daniel was going to go study anywhere in the universe for twenty years—

“Screw ’em,” he says.

Daniel laughs his unfunny laugh. “It’s not that simple.”

“They’ll let you come,” says John, and it’s suddenly very, very important that Daniel say yes to this. “No way can they say no, after what we did. Tell them you need a break. Tell them you’re retiring. You said it. This isn’t what you want.”

“No,” says Daniel. “ _No_ , it isn’t. I can’t—thirty more years of this? I’ll go _insane_ , I—” he stops, laughs that short laugh. “No,” he says again.

“So screw ’em,” says John.

 

Teal’c comes to see Daniel once while John’s with him, getting ready to leave. John’s never met him before, but he’s pretty unmistakable, huge and with the gold forehead thing, and—huge.

“Hey, Teal’c,” says Daniel. “Come to help out?”

“Indeed,” says Teal’c, and starts packing Daniel’s stuff. There isn’t really enough for Daniel to need help, but okay, that isn’t what this is about. 

John learns that Teal’c is enjoying spending time with his Jaffa brothers and sisters, and possibly one sister in particular, but he’s grieved for Earth’s people and misses all the cool stuff that’s down there.

“Yeah,” says Daniel, “nothing like realizing you’ve forever lost the opportunity to watch _Babylon_ _5_ to really darken your day.”

Teal’c looks pained. “I once owned the entire series on DVD.”

“I’m sure somebody has it back home,” says John. “If no one finds it hanging around down there somewhere, we could send you some media files.”

This puts Teal’c’s attention on John. “Thank you, Colonel Sheppard,” he says.

“No problem, Teal’c.” says John.

“I understand that you fought alongside Daniel Jackson against the Wraith for many weeks,” says Teal’c.

“That’s true,” says John, a little nervous.

“He thinks highly of you,” says Teal’c, which is news to John. “I am glad that if he must leave, he does so in the company of a trusted friend.”

John blinks and looks at Daniel, who’s looking back at him with an expression that doesn’t help John think of something to say.

“So am I,” he says finally. Teal’c inclines his head at John and goes back to packing.

After a few minutes, John makes an excuse and leaves; he figures they should have some time alone.

 

John half expects Daniel to change his mind right up until the last second, but he doesn’t. Things are packed, orders are given, messages are recorded, and the _Daedalus_ leaves on schedule.

John doesn’t breathe easy until they’ve gone into hyperspace, and nobody can reasonably demand that Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard shouldn’t actually be here.

Rodney looks about as relieved as John. The second they’re away, he plops down in the mess with food and his laptop, and looks like he isn’t planning on moving for days.

“I need to do something that has absolutely no chance of getting anyone killed,” he says to John. “We have eighteen days, and during that time I will be doing _nothing_ that is not purely theoretical.”

“Theoretical, got it,” says John. “So if a virus takes over the computer systems and we’re all going to die—”

“Make Hermiod handle it,” says Rodney. “I will be _right here_.”

Caldwell is still bizarrely well-disposed toward John, which John decides to prolong as long as possible by staying away from the bridge. He should really send the colonel a _thanks for saving my life all those times_ card. And with Earth the way it is, it’s possible Hallmark will actually put out something like that, who knows.

He and Daniel spend a lot of time having sex.

“I haven’t figured it out yet,” says Daniel a couple of days into the trip, naked and sprawled in John’s bunk.

“Haven’t figured what out?” John asks lazily, wondering if giving Daniel another blowjob is in the cards.

“We’re finished,” says Daniel. “And still alive. Somehow. I don’t think my subconscious knows it yet.”

He looks confused. John closes his eyes for a second. “Hey,” he tries. “Remember, a while back, I asked you when you were last in a good mood?”

“Yes,” says Daniel cautiously.

“You asked me how that was relevant to anything.”

“Yes,” says Daniel again.

“Well,” says John, “now it’s relevant.” And he bends his head and starts working on that blowjob. 

_end_  


__


End file.
